there used to be an emptiness inside parker that yawned so wide it made her hurt. she grew up without a home. without warm, scratch-made meals. without clothes that fit or felt right. without anything that ever made her smile, or not a smile that felt real, at least. without kind hands, without “i love you”s. she would try not to think about it, but the feeling had teeth. and nothing she found ever sated it. not cash, not jewels, not artwork or statuettes or carvings or gold. didn’t matter how much she took, or how expensive or shiny it was—it always left her still hungry.
and now she’s so full that sometimes she doesn’t know what to do with it. she has an apartment on the top floor that’s cozy and lived-in, signs of her and the boys tucked into every nook and cranny to say that they’re here, that this is theirs. eliot makes her meals so good she can’t help but lick her plate clean half the time, french toast soggy with syrup and crusty breads slathered with salted butter and pastas thick with sauce and good meat and cheese. hardison brings home sweaters and shirts and slacks made of soft, easy fabrics just because he thought she might look pretty in them, and they always fit perfectly because she’d swear that hardison knows the design of her body better than she does herself. both of them make her laugh until she cries, and they pick lint off her clothes and hold her hand when she’s scared and snuggle her between them on the couch or in their bed so she’s all warm and safe like a bunny in her burrow, and over and over, again and again, morning noon and night they tell her they love her, they love her, they love her. sometimes all of it is enough to make her jaw ache and her belly hurt. she’s never known abundance like this, and occasionally it scares her. what if it disappears? what if she loses it. what if she wakes up one day and it’s gone, stolen, never to be recovered
that’s when the boys take her hands. and that on its own would be enough—they’re reassuringly warm and soft and alive, not paper or canvas, not stone, not cold and marble-y and lifeless. but then they do her one better: they remind her that they’ve got no intentions of going anywhere, never have and never will. and anyway, even if anything did happen, she would get them back, wouldn’t she? she’s the world’s greatest thief after all. but nothing will happen, because they’re never going anywhere, never ever ever. because above all, they love her, and they don’t ever want to let her go. and the wild thing? she believes them. she knows they’re telling the truth.
so parker squeezes their hands, and then she follows their guidance as they tuck her in between them. hardison’s broad against her back and eliot’s solid against her front. she takes a deep breath, and when she lets it out, her skin feels a little less tight on her body. feels even less tight when she murmurs an “i love you” and the boys murmur the same back. finally, for once, she’s satisfied. things don’t hurt like they used to. matter of fact, nothing’s hurt in quite a while. and she feels luckier than she has words for to know that won’t change.
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