The Kidnap Job

(1/3)

Parker isn't particularly jumpy today, but she still feels him before he's got his hand on the door. She couldn't explain it if she tried, but she halts in her tracks, cereal box in her hand.

Then he's in the room, and she stares down at the half-filled bowl, frozen likes her muscles don't remember motion. From the corner of her eyes she can see that his hands are clenched into fists, and he is radiating anger, enough that she can feel it, like trembling heat in the air around him, coming toward her.

All instinct, she abandons the cereal and scuttles through the nearest door, well out of his way.

.

.

Eliot stops, only a few steps into the apartment, watching her go.

Crap.

He knows that look. Has worn that look. The last thing he's ever wanted is to cause it on someone. And certainly not on her.

She's probably off hiding somewhere, but the others haven't noticed a thing. Nate is talking to Sophie about their latest client. Hardison is typing away on his laptop, humming tunelessly.

They know - or at least suspect - the background, but they don't know the signals. Maybe they think it'd be big and dramatic, screaming and crying or somethin'. Not the breathless, frozen, please-don't-notice-me reaction he recognises so well. Remembers so well.

Of course, later on he'd been the one to draw the attention deliberately, trying to keep the anger from focusing on his mother and sister.

"Yo man, what's up? Somebody piss in your wheaties this mornin'?"

"Shut up Hardison," he growls, and goes into the kitchen.

Tea is always good for calming down. The wait for the water to boil, the fragrant steam - he uses the little ritual to breathe down the fury, shake the body anger from his muscles. When the tea is ready he feels calm, or at least as calm as he knows he'll get, and he takes the two mugs with him.

She has a number of hidey-holes in the apartment, places she'll go to when she's upset or confused or just wantin' to be alone. He knows them all, has rated them according to her state of mind. Nook behind the curtains - minor upset or confusion. On top of Nate's big wardrobe - bad days, because height is safety to Parker. Deep in the darkness of the eave spaces - not good at all.

He sets the cups down on the floor, one in front of the dark entrance, and one where he sits down, a few feet away. He settles with his back against the wall and stretches out his legs, just sitting for a while.

The tea is just cooling down enough to drink when she pokes her head out.

"Hi!"

It's a little brighter than he thinks it ought to be, but then you never can tell with Parker. She crouches on hands and knees, sniffing at the tea he's set down for her like she's some small furtive animal. Then, snapping out of whatever little game she's been playing, she picks up the cup and sits down next to him, shoulder to shoulder and hip against hip.

Nobody else gets away with that, but she - well, she's Parker.

"Sorry," he says quietly. Knows it's probably not necessary, that she understands the tea for the apology it is, but he needs the word to be out there.

"What made angry Eliot turn up?"

He lets out a deep breath.

"Saw somethin' on my way over here... this woman just completely went off on her kids at a crossing. Yellin' and jerkin' them around."

He knows that parents have breaking points, and Lord knew he'd been no angel himself. It had been the expressions of the kids though, the downcast, quiet looks that said that this wasn't new to them.

"Didya stop?"

"Couldn't." He huffs out a breath in frustration. "By the time I could, they were long gone."

She leans her head against his shoulder, and he resists the urge to put his arm around her.

"Not like there's much I could do anyway, is there?" he grumbles finally. "I mean, they were too young to know that your mama is not s'pposed to be doin' that. Be real upsetting if some stranger started yellin' at her."

And it's not like being taken away from their mother and going into the system is such a stellar option. That doesn't need saying.

"We could steal them and keep them," Parker says brightly.

"Parker darlin', when you steal kids they call it kidnapping," he says, half amused, half incredulous. "And people get real upset about it."

That doesn't seem to sink in, so he changes tack.

"'sides, not like we'd be any good as parents."

He knows all too well that in stress situations, you follow the examples you've always had. Even his sister, too young to really remember the worst of their youth, struggled with her own kids. Years of therapy and anger management later she's the sort of parent they all should have had. He's happily paid for quite a bit of it, anything to help his nieces have the right sort of childhood. Anything to help his sister stop from becoming the sort of parent she never wanted to be.

"We're too broken," Parker agrees. There should be emotion in that statement, but there isn't. She's looking at the top of the stairs which lead down into the living. "There's something wrong with us..."

He chuckles as he follows her fractured, meandering trail of thought.

"No, no, no. We are not stealing those kids for Sophie and Nate."

"Think about it!" she says with that manic grin that makes his heart ache. "Nathan lost his son, and Sophie-" she leans forward and gestures in the air with her teacup, spilling a little. "She wants kids -and the kids need better parents! It's perfect!"

He doesn't say anything, because he doesn't think it's required, but he puts his arm around her while she tries to reconcile fantasy with reality. Parker smiles and nestles against his side.

.

TBC