CHAPTER ELEVEN
Fantasia

"Parker?" There's knock on the door, and Parker closes her eyes and takes a deep breath as Hardison continues, "Parker, can you… please open the door? Parker…?"

She didn't know what to do, so she trapped herself in one of the bedrooms, just trying to give herself room to think. But thinking seemed to be proving difficult, because the only thing that was happening in her head was replaying what just happened over and over again. She knows the what part of the question, but she can't think enough to get to the why.

"Parker?"

She didn't know what to tell him, mainly because it was her who kissed him. She still can't figure out why she did that. Well, she knows why, but she doesn't know why she didn't stop herself. She promised herself she wouldn't do this. She didn't want to hurt Hardison, and with her whole 'I don't know what I want' thing that is dancing around her head like hippos in tutus… wait, she got a bit off track there.

Cookies.

Parker unlocks the door and throws it open, and Hardison just blinks and takes a step back from the suddenness. She's looking at him, and she's going to try to explain this even though her head is like Fantasia.

"I'm cookies," she told him. "With the locks and the fiddlyness and… and I'm not done baking," she tells him. "Chocolate chips and lock picks."

Hardison blinks, and it takes him awhile to answer, and Parker is hoping she made some kind of sense because her brain didn't seem to be making any. Hardison looked a bit awkward though, just from this entire situation and shifted a bit on his feet. He must have had to think about what she just said, replay it in his head a bit, because it was silent for a minute before he said, "I get the lock thing… you said that before. But the… oh," then Hardison smirked, actually amused. Still looking awkward, but at the same time, still amused, "Did you just quote Buffy? Well, quote Buffy badly, anyway."

"Yes, and I'm not ready to be eaten! I'm still soft!" Parker exclaims, then she blinks and slaps a hand over her face. "No, wait…" And then she retreats back into the room and shuts the door behind her. Mickey mouse just showed up in her head with his wand.

"Parker!" Hardison asks, but the amusement is still light in his voice. But then its gone, and his voice is softer and he knocks on the door lightly. "Hey, Parker? I… I understand what you're saying, okay? I won't try to pick your lock or anything." Then there's a pause and then, "Oh god, now you have me doing it…" he mumbles, embarrassed, and Parker finds herself smiling a little bit, even in her scared state.

It wasn't like she didn't like kissing Hardison. She did. A lot, and that was what was bad. It was so… it was so much like how she felt when she kissed Justine, only so different at the same time. But all the tingly feelings, all the heart beating and the labored breathing and the… desire. Parker's eyes popped wide open at that revelation. For some reason, she never exactly associated liking Hardison with having sexual feelings towards him. Not really anyway, she never really thought about actually have desire for the man, even though she knew that liking him would more than likely result in sex at some point, if they ever decided to go that far… why is she thinking about this?

She wants to stick C-4 on Mickey Mouse, and blow him and his stupid dancing hippos up.

She bangs the back of her head against the wood of the door and sighs. She doesn't know how to stop her own brain. Whenever she gets scared and nervous random things pop up in there, and this time it seemed to be linked to that stupid movie. "Parker?" Hardison asked again, and Parker closes her eyes.

"Yeah?" she asks softly, still not opening her eyes.

"Are we…" there's a light sigh and then, "Are we… you know, okay?" he asks her, and then it's her turn to sigh softly. She wants to say yes, because they were… they are. But she's also terrified now that she did that. "I won't tell anyone, if that's what you worried about…"

"That's not it," she tells him through the closed door. She opens her eyes and turns her head to rest her cheek against the wood. She could feel him on the other side of it.

"Then what is it?" he asks her, and she can feel him lean against the door on the opposite side. She doesn't know if she wants to tell him, and now Mickey was making the waves jump up against the rocks in his silly little sorcerer hat.

She wants to trade her brain in for a new one.

"I'm…" Parker was about to tell him, about to tell him that she was just scared, but instead ends with, "Tired. I'm tired; I'm going to go to bed. Mickey's driving me crazy."

A pause. "Mickey?" Another pause, and Parker wishes she didn't say anything. "Mickey Mouse?" But then she smiles, Hardison knows her too well.

"Yeah."

She knows Hardison's smiling, even though she can't see him, she can just hear it in his voice. "Okay… well I'll see you in the morning, I guess. Okay? Yeah…"

Parker doesn't say anything; just listens to him walk away and go into the other bedroom, his footsteps slowly fading away. She sighs and walks over to the bed and flops down onto it face first. She hated this; she didn't know what to do. But at the same time she kind of loved it, all besides Mickey in her brain. Stupid mops and their buckets of water.

Truth was, she wasn't just scared to start it because it would be her first relationship with a man, she was scared to start it because of how bad everything hurt when she ended things with Justine. Or should she say, Justine ended things with her. And as she lay there in bed, staring at the far wall and trying to push Mickey Mouse out of her brain, she couldn't help but remember what happened.

"I can't do this anymore, Parker," Justine told her while they were packing once again to move. The police were getting too close, and they had to move on. They had gotten what they came for anyway, or at least Parker did.

"What? I thought you liked Rome," Parker blinked, looking up from shoving her clothes into a bag. "We can go to France if you want, or New Zealand, you liked that because… why again?"

Justine let out a small laugh, and her lips curled up into a smile as she looked down at the floor before she let out quietly, "'Cause Xena was filmed there."

"Right, that woman with a sword. We can go there instead," Parker told her and gave her a little smile, even though she was getting this weird feeling in the pit of her stomach that she couldn't identify. It wasn't one of those good feelings; it was one of the bad ones. The bad ones that made her feel like her stomach dropped all the way to the floor.

Justine shook her head and looked up at her, and Parker didn't like the smile she was giving her. It was almost sad, kind of pitying. Oh no. "It's not… it's not where we're goin'… it's…" then she sighs, "It's us, babygirl."

"What's wrong with us?" Parker asked, that worry becoming more predominant. She abandoned her packing and stood up straighter, maybe trying to make herself seem more okay, stronger. Taller maybe, even though she was already two inches taller than Justine.

"It ain't workin'," Justine told her softly, and Parker felt like someone had just stabbed her through the heart. She tried to say something, anything, but nothing seemed to come out of her mouth. "It's not that I don't… well, ya know…"

"I don't know," Parker told her, and found that her voice was shaking. She set her jaw and just stared at the other woman across from her.

"That I don't love you," Justine told her softly. Then Parker got angry, because she just couldn't understand why she was doing this then.

"Then why can't you stay?!" Parker yelled, her emotions getting the better of her. She chose anger over sadness because she could handle it better; it didn't make her seem as weak. And she knew she was weak… because she had no control over this situation.

"This ain't my lifestyle, Parker. I ain't… I ain't a thief. I can't deal with all this runnin' all the damn time, all the movin' to different places!" Justine exclaims, and Parker just glares at her.

"You're the one who said you wanted to be like Bonnie and Clyde!" Parker screamed at her, the emotion heavy in her voice. "Isn't that what this is? With the running and the stealing and… isn't this what you wanted? I don't understand!"

"I thought I wanted it," Justine told her, her voice getting softer. "But I just can't… I mean I ain't even stealing anythin'. You do it. I just sit here, we have fun a little bit till we gotta pack up and run again."

"I get you things!" Parker tells her, as if that's supposed to mean something because she thinks it should. She spends her precious money on her, something she doesn't even do for herself.

"Then what does that make me, your whore?" Justine exclaimed, now angry, but that wasn't what Parker meant and now she's even more mad because she hates not being understood.

"I didn't say that!" Parker screamed, furious. She went over to the bureau which was adorned with all of the jewelry she had bought for Justine, and picked up a fistful and showed it to her. "You want things and I get you them, what am I doing wrong?!" She slammed the jewelry back down on the bureau and stared at her.

"Nothing!" Justine yelled at her, frustrated herself.

"Then why are you leaving me?!" Parker cried, not understand it. Any of it. Wasn't she doing what girlfriends are supposed to do?

"Because I can't keep running!"

"Fine!" Parker exclaimed, and went back over to the bags that were on the bed and started throwing the clothes back out of it.

"What are you doing?"

"We won't run then!" Parker exclaimed, just desperate to keep her. She didn't care. She never had something like this before in her life and didn't want to let it go. But Justine took her hands in hers and stilled her movements.

"Stop. Parker, stop. Listen to me," Justine said, and Parker heard herself let out a sob she didn't want to escape her lips. She was crying now, and she didn't want to do that. "You have to go, you'll get caught if you stay here."

"I don't care!"

"Yes, you do," Justine told her softly, and sat down on the bed, guiding Parker down slowly to sit next to her. Parker put her head in her hands, trying to stop the crying but at the same time just not wanting Justine to see her do it. "This is your thing, I see how happy you get when you steal shit, whatever it is. Ya love it, I ain't gonna take that away from you."

Parker didn't understand why if she didn't want to take stealing away from her because she loves it, why she would then take herself away from her when she loved her too. But she didn't answer her; she was too busy trying not to cry.

"We had a nice year…" Justine told her, and brushes a piece of hair away from Parker's face, but Parker moves away from her. She takes her head out of her hands and looks at her, tears staining her cheeks and when she sees them she looks at her sadly and says, "Oh, sweetie…"

"I wanted to be with you forever," Parker told her seriously, her voice breaking, but it didn't matter. She needed to tell her.

Justine smiled at her sadly and put her hand on top of Parker's that was resting on her lap. "You're eighteen, you don't know whatcha want yet, babygirl."

Parker moved her hand away from her and glared, "Don't patronize me."

Justine smirked, "Big word."

"I said don't," Parker told her seriously, and Justine's smirk faltered.

"Sorry," she apologized. Parker didn't say anything though, just stared at the far wall. It felt like her insides were shredding apart. "Look, it ain't like you're gonna be alone. You got Jake," she told her, but that just made Parker roll her eyes in the middle of a glare.

"I don't kiss Jake," she responded flatly. "Jake doesn't make me feel… he doesn't make me feel all the tingly stuff inside like you do. With the shivers and stuff." She saw Justine smile at her description, she always liked the way Parker described things.

"I know," Justine said softly. She looked down at the ground, "Ya know this ain't easy for me either."

Parker looked over at her, and she wished the desperation didn't show as much as it did in her voice when she pleaded, "Then don't go."

"I have to." Justine sighed and now it was her turn to look at the wall, "This is… this is like some kind of fantasy life. It ain't real."

"Just because it's fantasy doesn't mean it can't be real," Parker told her, and Justine smiled a little before turning to look at her sadly.

"Yeah, it does."

Parker wiped her tears off of her cheeks with the back of her hand and took a shuddered breath. She hated this, and she didn't know how to stop it. She didn't want her to go, she didn't want her to leave her. Everyone always leaves her, it wasn't fair.

Justine took a breath before getting up and turning to face her. She leaned down and kissed her on the cheek softly, and it made Parker's eyes flutter closed. "You'll always be my Bonnie, babygirl… but I can't be your Clyde," she whispered in her ear. "I promise you'll find one though… one day."

It broke Parker's heart. Shattered it into a million pieces. She watched Justine leave, and all she could do was cry. She cried so hard her throat hurt and she couldn't breathe. And when Jake came into her and Justine's… now just her room, she held onto his shirt and cried against his chest, asking him why she had to hurt her like that. Over and over she asked him why… but he didn't have an answer for her.

Parker lay awake most of that night, just thinking about when Justine left her. She felt herself begin to cry, just an aftermath of the memory and she took a pillow and held it tightly against her chest, scared that the same thing would happen with Hardison if she ever let him get that close.

She missed Jake, because he would tell her how to be with a man. She missed her mother, because she knew her mother would tell her that Hardison was her prince. She missed Sophie, because she would help her figure out her feelings. She missed Nate, because he would find her something to do to keep her mind off of things. And she missed Eliot, because even though he was always grumpy, if she was crying like she is now he would find a way to make it better.

And she missed Hardison, even though he was just in the next room, now more than ever, she just wanted his arms around her. It didn't matter why, it didn't matter what it meant she just… needed it. He made her feel safe.

But instead she just cried herself to sleep.

TBC…