After dishes are licked clean, after toasts are proposed and sealed with orange soda, after stories are told and sworn to be unbelievable and attested with hands to god and wide-eyed not-even-for-a-minute-believable outrage while laughter ekes its toll from every eye, after all of that comes the quiet, the re-union, the homecoming.

Eliot looks to Parker, offers her a little bow and a smirk and says ‘Right of first refusal’ and when she smiles and shakes her head he says ‘Okay, then,’ squaring off like he’s stepping into the ring and Hardison does what Eliot’s opponents should always do, he yields, melting into Eliot while Parker watches, the click of the final tumbler that sets everything free.

After, and after, and after again they anchor him safe and snug between their bodies so that he can’t float away and in the silence and stillness that follows they each can feel how every empty place in every separate heart is full to overflowing again, running over and filling each other up; three separate little ponds becoming an ocean once again.