A/N: Still totally unsure where this is going, but this bit kind of wrote itself. Be honest with me now; are y'all up for 2k words of nothing but kid versions of Parker and Hardison being consistently precocious and intermittently felonious?

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Nate fell asleep while they were still putting band aids on his knuckles- -on ALL his knuckles. Alec had seen him punch that one guy but maybe he'd punched some other guys too. He was kind of hunched over on himself, breathing rough in his sleep, and the two kids looked at each other. "Maybe he should lie down?" Alec asked in his best soft voice. (Parker had taught him how to do a really good one)

"I guess," Parker said doubtfully. She looked the man over from a couple of directions, then shrugged and planted her hands against his shoulder to push. Nate tipped over slowly into the blankets, and it was funny enough that they both laughed some. It's really hard to laugh quietly, but they had practiced a lot; sometimes after Parker took stuff from someone's pocket, they hid nearby and watched as the person realized his wallet was gone-it was always really funny, and they always laughed with their hands over their mouths until they fell over and their bellies hurt.

Thinking about stealing reminded Alec that Parker had come back with loot, and he craned his neck to look where she had set them down. "Did you steal from those bad guys?" He frowned when he thought that, because stealing was funny and they needed stuff, but you had to be careful who you stole from. Not everyone was as cool about it as Nate, and some could be really really mean.

"Kind of," Parker said happily. Stealing stuff always made her happy; Alec liked what you could DO with the stuff, like play games on the phones or buy food with the money, but Parker just liked taking it, whether they needed it or not. "They were all looking so no one was in their car. There was only two phones and a wallet, and one of the phones was boring, but I brought you the cool one. I think it's our guy's."

"Awesome! Gimme!" She did straight away, because Parker didn't like giving away things that were hers but Alec was hers too, so giving stuff to him wasn't really like giving it away. It was a smart phone, and a pretty sweet one too, but Alec could tell right away that something was wrong with it because it felt funny. At first he thought maybe it was a fake phone-because Nate was like some kind of spy, even if he said he was just a thief, so maybe it was some kind of spy gear that only looked like a phone-but he quickly realized that all it was missing was its battery. He pried loose the door on the back, and held out his free hand for the bag he knew Parker was going to put in it. Parker figured things out even quicker than him sometimes.

"Do we have the right kind?" She hissed, and he rummaged through the bag of phone batteries before triumphantly pulling out the right one.

"Bingo!" He crowed, snapping the battery in place and turning on the phone. "We in business."

"Awesome," Parker said cooly. Parker was kinda like a spy too, sometimes.

The phone was a little weird; it was a fancy one, but set up very simple. Most guys who had big fancy phones had a zillion apps on them, all kinds of programs and stuff. Nate seemed to have just the ones that came with the phone. Even the background was boring; some kind of painting, one of the ones that didn't really look like anything, like even Alec could have painted it. He called up the contact list, which had only six entries, and saw that there weren't even names-just two letters for each one, 'A S', 'S D', like that. "I think Nate's a spy," he told Parker.

"Really?" She thought about that, and made a face. "Yeah, maybe." They looked at Nate, who was lying curled up so still that only Parker's hand on his shoulder, going up and down as he breathed, showed that he was still alive. "That's kinda cool. I never met a spy before."

"But you prob'ly did," said Alec, momentarily forgetting the phone. "I mean, their job is to be all secret and stuff. I bet we met lots of spies that we just didn't realize."

"I probably stole from a spy before," Parker said dreamily. "Hey, does that mean Nate is just a bad spy? 'Cause we caught him."

"Oh." Alec thought about that, looking the man in question over with sudden doubt. "Yeah. But, I mean, he got shot, right? That's a good excuse for getting caught." Parker shrugged, admitting that that was so.

Alec didn't want to try calling any of the numbers in the phone, so he instead found the menu for text messages; there was just one message, three words, and the kids looked at each other. "You're smarter," Parker said. "You can read."

"You're older!" said Alec, "and you're smart too!"

"Fine. We'll read it together."

They both bent over the phone, sounding out the first word. "Ahhh...rehhh...eee. Arey?" Parker frowned. "Is that this guy's name?"

"Huh? Oh! You were gone. This guy's name is Nate," Alec said proudly. He'd forgotten Nate's last name, but both he and Parker only had one name and they were fine.

"Really? So what's 'arey'?" He shrugged, and she sounded out the next one. "Yuh...ohh...uhh. Oh...wait. I know that one. 'You'."

"Right! And the last one is 'ok', with a question. You ok?"

"Ohhhhhh," Parker said. "The first one must be 'are'! 'Are you ok'. That does not look like 'are'. There's two extra letters."

"Spelling," Alec said sagely. "Craziness."

"So...his friend is looking for him? Should we answer?"

"They'll prob'ly think we stole his phone." Alec shook his head. "If his friends are spies too they could prob'ly shoot us with a missile or something."

"We did steal it," Parker pointed out. "Let's wake him up. Then he can tell them we're with him." She poked his shoulder, lightly at first, but more and more strongly. Nate didn't wake up, which was impressive-Parker usually woke Alec up, and she had a powerful poke. Alec joined her after a minute, but even with both of them pushing at him and calling his name as loud as they dared, he didn't open his eyes.

"He ain't dead, right?" asked Alec, worried.

"No, see? He's still breathing. I guess he's just really tired." Parker eyed him. "I'm tired too. We should sleep."

"Paaaaarker," Alec whined, "I hate sleepin' when it's day!"

"Well, we were awake all night so we have to sleep in the day," she said reasonably. "Besides, those bad guys can't look for us in the day because there's people working around here." She stood up, fists on hips, and surveyed their house; usually they slept curled up in the middle of the pile of blankets and stuff, but right now Nate was right smack in the middle, and Nate was waaaaaay bigger than them. "We can be next to him," she decided. "Just not by hands or feet. Head and back is better."

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Nate regained consciousness to a looming claustrophobic feeling. He slowly pried his eyes open, and saw little at first but a curiously filtered light; as he remembered where he was and what was happening, he blinked, feeling marginally more alert. The light was coming through cracks between containers, yes, but there was also a wispy gold curtain in front of his eyes. He recognized it as Parker's hair just as it moved back and her voice whispered above his head. "Are you awake?"

He tried to crane his neck to look at her, regretting it as dizziness washed over him again. He closed his eyes and swallowed harshly. "Um. Yeah. Kinda." With a near-silent rustle the shifted, and when he worked up the nerve to open his eyes again he saw that she had sat up from where she must have been sprawled on the floor near the crown of his head. She leaned over him, and he turned his head a little to the left (not risking lifting it off the ground yet) to meet her eyes. "How long was I out?"

"You've been asleep for hours," she said feelingly. "Hours. It was really boring."

"Sorry," he tried, then frowned as that number registered. "Wait, hours? The Russians-" he started to try and lift himself up, and she held him down by pressing her hands against his forehead. Which was completely embarrassing.

"Shh," she hissed. "You'll wake Alec."

"Sorry," he said again, this time with the genuine sentiment that came from someone who remembered the trials of getting a toddler to sleep. "But I'm concerned about those Russian, ah, bad guys. They haven't-"

"It's day," she interrupted. "There's people working in the day so they can't look until it's night again."

"Okay." he let his eyes drift closed again as he thought. "Okay..." Parker leaned over him closer, and her hair tickled at his cheek and neck. "Parker, do you have a phone I can use?"

"Oh, yeah." The hair disappeared for a moment then came back. He looked up blearily to find his own phone hovering in front of his eyes. "I got your phone from those guys' car. Some guy texted you to say 'are you okay'."

"Seriously?" He started to get up again, and this time she stopped him by literally leaning down and pressing her sharp little chin into his neck. "Hey, ow," he protested mildly. She moved to instead lay her cheek against his, looking at the phone as he held it before his blurry eyes.

"What are you saying?" she asked, as he hunted and pecked his way through the keys.

"I'm telling them about where I am and that the bad guys will be here at dark." Only moments after he pressed 'send' a reply popped up, and he squinted at it, for once feeling a little bitter at his hacker's habit of always using full sentences with proper grammar and punctuation. Too many characters...

"What's it say?" asked Parker, her voice echoing as though it came from an earbud, her cheekbone being right against his as it was.

"He says..." Nate drew the phone even closer to his face. "He says they've been tracking my phone since it turned on two hours ago. Eliot was on a plane as soon as I disappeared, and he'll be landing here in Chicago soon." Alec made a sleepy, contented noise as he shifted somewhere behind Nate's back, and Parker's head lifted away for a moment before returning to a resting place on his shoulder.

"So your friend's coming? What about the bad guys?"

Nate laughed quietly, and Parker made a small pleased sound as she pressed herself closer to his back. "Don't worry about them. Eliot can handle them."

"Okay," she said absently, still curled against him, and he grinned, the motion tugging against the band aid on his cheek. He remembered story time with Sam, when his son would slowly creep more and more onto Daddy's lap until he was crowded against his chest, enjoying the rumble of Nate's voice almost more than the story itself.

"Why don't you go back to sleep," he said softly. "My friend will call when he's outside." He started to relax again himself before a thought occurred to him. "Parker?"

"Hmm?" she said in a drowsy voice.

"Parker, if my friend calls and I'm unconscious...if you can't wake me up again, you should answer the phone, ok? You can tell him where we are then."

"Okay."

"Thanks." Still uneasy, but with no other options, and with the soporific effect of two kids putting out sleep-vibes, Nate let himself drop into unconsciousness once more.