lmx_v3point3

Fic: Taking Care

Author: LMX
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Hardison/Eliot/Parker, Nana, OMC
Spoilers: Future!Fic, potential general spoilers for all Seasons 1 and 2. Specifics for The Stork Job and The Two Live Crew Job
Warnings: Indirect discussion of abused children and brief mentions of drug abuse. Completely innaccurate use of Hebrew (please buzz me to correct if you are a native speaker!!)

Disclaimer: Everything belongs to the studio, producers and writers except the words themselves and the order I've put them in. Dean, Lana and Reph are original characters with no basis in canon or the real world.

Summary: Nana needs help looking after her Grandson. Unforunately, all she's got is a crew of only-semi-retired crooks.

- - -

Prologue

Part 1A

Part 1B



Eliot stepped out into the cold air, closing the motel door on the three sleeping inside. He pulled out his phone and dialled Raquel's land line, trusting that she would be home by now.

"שלום " The greeting was in Hebrew, and the voice was male - Reph, her husband. Eliot grit his teeth.

"?היא בבית" he asked after Raquel.

"Eliot?" Reph asked, voice tight and worried. Eliot's stomach dropped. She wasn't home. He'd left her alone on a job and she hadn't come home.

Eliot really didn't want to have this conversation. His Hebrew wasn't good enough to explain what had happened and Reph's English wasn't good enough to understand.

"She is to shop," Reph offered finally when Eliot didn't answer, and Eliot felt like falling down with relief. She was alright. He sank down onto the bench outside their room. "Raquel call you later, yes?" Reph added.

It didn't explain why Reph sounded like he was angry with him, but it didn't matter because she was home and alright.

"תודה" He thanked him sincerely, let Reph sign off and disconnected the call, silencing his phone so that when it rang it didn't wake the others.

He was shocked to see he was shaking a little. For a minute there he really had thought... It was strange to have people he cared about to that extent. He was still getting used to things like that; to going home to a full house every night and being looked after when he needed, but every so often he was reminded just how precarious all that was.

He drew a stuttered breath and forced himself to relax. It was a lot easier now he knew his screw up the other day hadn't had any serious consequences. When he'd pulled himself back together he wandered back inside, closing the door behind him and leaning against it.

Parker's pale skin stood out from the dark sheets in the faint light from the street lights outside, Alec's head pillowed on her stomach was like a silhouette. He smiled at the picture the two of them made and took a seat by the little table, taking the opportunity to stare.

A soft sigh was Dean rolling over in his bed, and Eliot glanced over to make sure he was still sleeping. Parker and Hardison were used to him now, but to a little kid, some guy awake in the room with him while he was sleeping might be creepy.

He found himself thinking of the road trips he'd taken with his dad and sister, down to see his mom's parents. They'd always stopped at a motel half way through the journey, him and his sister sharing a double bed and his dad in the single by the door. When he was younger he used to imagine that he took that bed so he could guard them better from the monsters outside. His sister had laughed at him when he'd told her all about it once, but he'd liked the idea even when he'd been too old to think that there were really monsters out there.

He glanced at Dean in the bed closest to the door and wondered what he thought of all this. Parker talked about reasons she'd turned out like she did - not about the reasons themselves, just that they existed - and he knew Hardison didn't talk about his childhood before Nana at all, but Eliot didn't have any kind of excuses like that for why he was the way he was.

He had reasons he wasn't going to put his dad and Parker or Hardison in the same room any time soon. Very good reasons, that had nothing to do with his own childhood and everything to do with the man his dad was.

But the kind of man Eliot was? He was violent and aggressive and he fought people for a living and he couldn't put his finger on one thing in his childhood that made him like that. So it had to be something in him.

The thought that he might end up like one of the people Hardison or Parker wouldn't talk about truly terrified him. Maybe he could get through this without going near the kid beyond what he had to, to keep him safe. He could do that. He could be the one who slept by the door in case the monsters came. You didn't have to be good with kids to do that.

His phone buzzed under his hand and he stepped outside to answer it.

- 0 -

Parker had no idea someone so small could have so many thoughts. Dean hadn't stopped talking at all for the last hundred miles at least, and he hadn't repeated himself or even hesitated.

They'd both been quiet after they'd left the hospital yesterday - him and Alec, and that had worried her a little and made her wonder if she was missing something important, but this was downright scary.

He'd told them something about what seemed like every kid in his entire school and then he'd told them all about someone's birthday party and what had happened there and somewhere around the three hour mark Eliot had demanded they put on some music and he take over driving.

- 0 -

Alec stretched in his seat, looking around him. Dean had his nose pressed up against the glass in the seat beside him and Parker was fiddling with the radio in the front seat next to Eliot.

They'd plunged into urban Boston a couple of minutes ago, and were still speeding towards the city center on the freeway. The feeling of home was a strange one, given where they'd just been, but Alec liked it.

It took them a good thirty minutes to get from one end of Boston to the other, hitting brutal rush hour traffic just as they started the crawl up to their block. Dean spent every second of it staring out of the windows, tugging at his seat-belt to get the best view possible as buildings rose up around them, reaching for the sky.

The noise of excitement he made when Eliot pulled off the road and dropped into the underground parking garage made Parker turn in her seat and stare at him. She tilted her head to one side as if trying to work him out, and then turned back to Eliot.

"He looks funny, is he alright?" she asked him curiously.

"Ask him yourself, Parker." Eliot muttered in reply, working hard to get the truck through the narrow space. Parker went back to staring.

It took all of them loaded down with bags to get all of Dean's stuff upstairs in one trip, and Alec dropped everything he was carrying in the doorway as he fished his keys out of his pocket for the nth time.

He watched Dean's face carefully as he opened the door and ushered him inside. Eliot shoved past them, dumped his load on the sofa and headed straight into the kitchen. When he looked back to ask Parker what that was all about, she was gone too, the bags she had been carrying sitting with the ones Eliot had left on the sofa.

"Well alright then." he shrugged, and grinned at Dean. "Pick your room, dude, and we'll make sure there's space enough for you to get to the bed at least for tonight."

"I can chose?" Dean asked, wide-eyed.

"Yup." Alec grinned back. "Y' got Parker's room, here, or mine over there."

"Wow!" Dean laughed.

Parker looked over Alec's shoulder as Dean opened the door to her room.

"I moved the C4," she whispered in his ear, and Alec whirled around.

"You kept C4 in our apartment!?" he whispered-shouted, eyes wide.

"Wow, there's a lot of things in here." Dean laughed again, looking over the room nearly hidden under piles of access equipment, empty antique frames and duffel bags.

"Yes," Parker said quickly, eyes wide and flicking between the two men sharply. "Lots and lots of my things, in my room. Mine." she emphasised.

Eliot put an arm around her from behind and pulled her away, visibly struggling. "Take your time, guys," he called over his shoulder. "Get yourselves settled in."

Parker muttered frustrated words at him as he pulled her out of the door, and she glanced back at Alec one last time before Eliot shut the door behind them.

Hardison looked down at Dean, who was staring up at him with a frown. "Umm... right." He floundered for a second. "Wanna see the coolest room, now?"

"I guess." Dean replied quietly.

"Come and see the Alec Hardison patented 'Game Room'." Hardison quipped. He led the way across the hall to what was technically his room, but Eliot was right, he'd not slept in it since they'd moved in. There were still boxes in the corner that he hadn't needed to unpack yet. Computer spares, mostly, and little bits of tech that they had been using for jobs. The bed was littered with the parts of an ancient Macintosh SE30 that he'd been trying to rebuild on and off with primarily home-made parts and rare spares off Ebay.

This room was his gaming room, and while he agreed with Eliot that they had to make space for Dean, the idea of giving up all night gaming sessions was more than a little horrific to him. He stared longingly at the wall mounted screen, wanting to play now purely because he was thinking about going without.

"Hey, Dean. You heard of World of Warcraft?" he asked.

"I guess..." Dean answered, hovering a hand over the top of the dismantled computer. "Did this break?"

Hardison frowned, still staring at the big screen and thrown for a minute. He turned around to watch Dean study the empty monitor box with its tiny CRT taken out. "It got pretty old. I'mma fix it, get it running again. It doesn't do much, compared to what we got now, but it's a classic, y'know?"

"It's pretty sweet." Dean looked around himself at the mess of computer parts and wiring and boxes still unpacked. "Can I stay in here? You can play while I'm sleeping, I don't mind."

"That's cool, man. I'mma dig you out a bed and we'll find you somewhere to put your clothes."

- 0 -

"Hey, we're back!" Eliot called through as Alec put another precious part off the bed into a labelled zip-lock and wrote what it was on the label and the label number on his map.

Parker bounced through his bedroom door, nearly flattening him against the wall as the door swung open. Dean sniggered at his startled scuttle, and Alec glared.

"What are you laughing at, Mr Level-Two-Tauren?" he asked, grinning as Dean pointed at the corner of the screen where his character was showing off a shiny new level three label. "Good job, man."

He held out a fist and waited until Dean realised he wanted him to punch it.

Eliot put his head through the door. He stood there for a minute like he was about to say something, but had been distracted. "Ya got him playing computer games already? Come on, man!"

"It's Warcraft, Eliot." Hardison objected. "It's much bigger than a game, it's a social..."

"I'm making secret pie," Eliot interrupted, irreverent. "So the kitchen is off-limits in five minutes. Anything you want, get it now."

Alec blinked. "Secret pie!?" he asked eagerly.

"I helped him shop for ingredients!" Parker declared proudly. "And I still don't know what's in it."

Eliot wandered out of the room, rolling his eyes. "Five minutes," he repeated.

"What's secret pie?" Dean asked, not looking away from the screen.

"It's a pie so secret that Eliot won't let us into the kitchen while he cooks it," Parker answered, eyes wide.

"I don't let you into the kitchen the rest of the time," Eliot called through from the other room.

"Secret pie." Hardison repeated, with a grin. "It's been a long time since he made secret pie."

"Not since that time we slept together in Nate's apartment," Parker said, grinning.

Alec cleared his throat loudly. "Hey Dean. Should we phone y' Nana, tell her you're all settled in?"

"Can I tell her about Uncle Eliot's pie?" Dean asked enthusiastically.

"Y' can tell her we'll bring her some when she gets out of the hospital!" Eliot shouted through again, the sounds of food preparation starting to filter through.

"Can I have some?" Dean asked, a little awed.

"'Course, man," Hardison grinned. "Eliot's never mean with his food. 'Cept when you've done something t' really piss... annoy him."

"I like pie," Dean offered.

"Everyone likes pie." Parker said knowledgeably. "Especially Eliot's pie."

That night, Dean's conversation with his Nana was opened with the words, "Nana, today Eliot made Special Pie."

At which point Eliot had interrupted. "Secret Pie, man. Secret," he'd grinned. "There ain't pot in it."

"Though that would explain why everyone likes it so much," Parker had observed. And things had generally degenerated from there.

- 0 -

Parker was sketching out a route into the newest Las Vegas vault and making a careful list of all the equipment she would need for the entry and retreat as she did so. There wasn't much in the vault yet - it was brand new and not completely up and running - but when it was full it would be a fantastic challenge.

Her head shot up at Dean's bright: "Morning!"

"Oh. You," Parker said, wide-eyed and started. "Don't you sleep lots? I thought kids slept lots."

Dean shook his head. "Oh, no. That's only babies," he told her seriously. "I'm much bigger than that now, so I don't need much sleep."

Parker eyed him for a minute more, not quite sure what to expect. "Hardison's trying to teach Eliot to sleep properly," she told him. "So they might not come out for a while. Do you need... anything?"

"I'm hungry." he declared. "Is there breakfast?"

"Hmm..." Parker stared across to the kitchen. "I'm not allowed in the kitchen unless Eliot's out." She thought it through. There was cereal and milk in easy reach from the first counter, she'd barely be inside... "Maybe if we stole some things he might not notice. We could make it..."

"Stealing's bad." Dean interrupted, face serious.

Parker spluttered, stared and then laughed so hard she went red in the face. After a couple of minutes, Alec stepped out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him, and hissed 'shh' at Parker until she stopped laughing.

"Dean thinks stealing is *bad*," she hissed back, and started giggling again.

"Eliot's just gone back to sleep, Parker," he mumbled sleepily. "Take Dean out for coffee and pancakes." He shoved a note from his wallet in Dean's hand - he knew better than to give it to Parker - and slid quickly back into their room, closing the door behind him.

Dean watched him go, then stared down at the note in his hand. "Uncle Eliot really isn't very good at sleeping, huh."

Parker scowled. "He's getting better. He can sleep two hours now without screaming or anything." Parker thought about this for a second. "Most of the time," she added. "Pancakes?"

- 0 -

Eliot was groggy after two hours of solid sleep. Hardison's persistence was really starting to pay off, if even after Parker's little PTSD episode at Nana's, he could get two full hours without nightmares. He did have a feeling it might have been about to get hairy though, waking up to Hardison's concerned scowl, and his muscles aching like he'd spent the last couple of hours fighting, not sleeping.

He blinked slowly as Dean ran past him and dive bombed over the top of the couch in two leaps. He looked across the room to Parker, who was frowning absently as if something was baffling her.

"Parker? Did you give Dean caffeine?" he asked slowly.

Dean stood up behind the couch. "We had coffee and pancakes this morning!" he declared brightly. "Which was awesome because at home I'm not allowed coffee, and Nana ain't great at pancakes, and these were better than your pancakes, Uncle Eliot. Maybe you should ask them how to cook them?"

Eliot growled under his breath. "If he's sick, you're cleaning it up," he told Parker bluntly. "HARDISON!"

"Man," Alec whined, wandering through from their room. "Why d'ya have to assume it was me?"

"Dean's got change in his pocket." Eliot pointed out. "Parker didn't give him money, Hardison."

Hardison rolled his eyes, caught. "You really think he's gonna be sick?" he asked guiltily as Dean bolted past them both again.

Eliot just scowled in reply. "Take him and Parker out to the park," he suggested. "Let Parker talk through the Las Vegas system with you and he can burn off some of that crap."

Alec nodded. "Where are you going?" he asked as Eliot grabbed a coat and his truck keys.

"I need to do some prep work to make sure we're ready for the next shipment." Eliot replied lightly, already half way out the door.

Alec stared at him in amazement. "Seriously?" he asked. "You're working now? Dean's been here less than twenty-four hours."

Eliot shrugged. "It's just prep," he replied. "Two hours, max."

He was already out the door when Alec called after him: "Yeah, prep so you can leave the country again as soon as you get a call!" He forced a smile and turned to Parker and Dean who were staring at him. "Who wants to go to the park!?" he asked.

- 0 -

Alec looked up from studying Dean when Eliot came back in nearly six hours later. He left Parker's side and sidled over to him as he put his coat away.

"Eliot, what do we do now?" he asked under his breath.

"What d'ya mean?" Eliot asked, looking tired.

"We were out at the park, only he got bored of that and he's been sitting there playing with his little trucks for... like an hour, man." Alec glanced at him, eyes wide. "What do we do now?"

"Have you tried asking him?" Eliot asked, looking nervous.

"Um... No. I guess I..." Alec shook his head and wandered over to stand behind the sofa. "Hey, Dean. What d'ya wanna do?" he asked, staring at the boy carefully.

"I don't know." Dean answered quietly, not looking up from the two trucks he was pushing across the carpet.

"D'ya want t' play on the computer?" Hardison offered.

Dean shook his head slowly.

"Do you want to learn to pick locks?" Parker tried.

Dean shook his head again.

"You guys could go out?" Eliot said, "There's a zoo." He looked at the others in desperation when Dean shook his head a third time.

"Parker, phone Sophie." Hardison said. "We need ideas."

"I'll try Maggie." Eliot added, going back to his coat to grab his phone.

Dean looked up at Hardison as the man lay down on the floor in front of him, and offered him a wide smile before turning back to his trucks.

"These are my favourite toys," he told Alec secretively. "Sometimes I like to just push them around and around…"

Parker poked her head out of the kitchen and asked: "Museum? Art gallery?"

Dean smiled this time, but still shook his head at her.

"Are y' hungry?" Eliot asked, leaning on the doorframe, phone to his ear. "I could cook. I could cook pie…" Eliot growled as Dean shook his head at him again, laughing out loud this time. "Maggie, he doesn't want pie," Eliot said into the phone, heading back out into the hall. "Is he sick?"

"I want pie!" Parker shouted up, still on the phone to Sophie.

"Hey Dean," Alec said as Parker backed into the kitchen, trying to explain to Sophie why she wanted pie now. "D'ya want t' play with y' trucks?" Alec asked. At his tiny nod, Alec grinned. "Y' got one I can play with?"

A bright yellow truck was deposited on his head, balancing there for a minute before rolling off. Alec caught it, chasing it after the two Dean held and ignoring all the suggestions being made by the ever expanding panel on the phones.

- 0 -

It had started with a very quiet declaration of: "I think I'm ready to go home now" and had escalated from there when Hardison had tried to explain to Dean that he had to stick with them for a while, at least until his Nana was ready for him to go home.

With the sugar-crash and the caffeine, that had lead to some screaming and shouting and crying and finally to Dean scrambling over to Alec and giving him a couple of good hits to the chest and kicks to the ankles.

All of that he had kind of expected after the realization that kids and caffeine didn't go together well, and if a normal adult had a reaction to it, the kid’s reaction would be a hundred times worse. What he hadn't expected was Eliot's reaction to the whole thing.

Eliot had stormed in there, grabbed Dean by the shirt collar and dragged him aside. "You don't hit us," he'd growled. "You don't kick us. There is no violence in this house, you understand me?"

"Eliot, just..." Hardison interrupted too late, Dean's face crumpling and lip trembling.

Eliot let go of him sharply and disappeared into the bedroom, leaving Hardison with the now-wailing boy.

- 0 -

It was nearly twenty minutes after the noise had settled down to more familiar levels that Alec came looking for Eliot, finding him laid out on his back on the bed, hands behind his head. He was working on looking unconcerned, but he got the idea that maybe Alec didn't believe him.

"Man, what's your problem?" Alec asked sharply. "All he wanted was some attention. So you're not a kid-person, fine. Get over it. Just be civil with him."

"Back off, Hardison." Eliot muttered.

"Have you had a personality transplant or something?" Alec demanded. "I mean... you were chilled, back at Nana's. Now it's like Dean's carrying a horrible virus or something."

"Hardison," Eliot growled a warning.

"No, I gotta know. You were pretty buddy-buddy with that kid from that hospital. Is this a race thing?" Hardison didn't even believe that himself, but he needed to get some kind of reaction out of the other man.

Eliot sat up sharply, looking pained. "God, no," he replied.

"A foster kid thing?"

"No, alright!" Eliot snapped back. "It's just me. It's nothing to do with Dean."

"Then what the hell, Eliot?" Alec asked, exasperation clear in his tone.

Eliot was quiet for a minute, shoving his hair out of his eyes roughly. "I don't know how to be better," he declared. "I don't know what it was about my childhood that made me like I am. I was never in the system, my dad never beat on me, I had a normal fucking life." Eliot met Alec's eyes briefly and then looked away. "I don't know how to make it so it's different for him."

Alec shook his head, baffled. "Eliot... he ain't gonna turn into a psycho killer in a couple of months."

Eliot rolled his eyes, with a sarcastic "Thanks."

"That's not what I mean, man. You know what I mean." Alec shook his head. "Worst thing you could do is make him think you don't like him. He'll be whatever he wants to be, he's a strong-minded little kid."

"What if I do it wrong?" Eliot asked.

"So long as you ain't beating on him, or treating him bad, I do think you can do it wrong." Alec retorted.

"Fuck," Eliot shivered. "You know I would never..."

"Yeah, I do." Alec said sharply. "Which is why - this whole thing here? - it stops now."

"He needs to know he can't hit people like that. He's a small kid for his age, but if he's back a couple of classes..."

"You got an idea?" Alec asked.

Eliot looked away for a minute, glanced out the window, anywhere but at Alec. "There's this class... in town, not far." He shrugged. "It's just basics, y'know. Form and discipline. It might be a place to start?"

- 0 -

The clock read one am, and Eliot had his truck keys in hand and was half way out the door when he saw movement from the living room. He relaxed as Dean wandered through.

"Hello Uncle Eliot," he whispered, blinking slowly but eyes bright. "Is it morning time now?"

Eliot looked towards the bedroom, debating waking Parker and Hardison. He swallowed hard, irrational fear creeping up on him and making him sweat.

"Hey man, sorry," he managed eventually. "Did I wake ya?"

"Naw. I got bored'a sleepin'." Dean answered, wandering further into the room as if he could tell Eliot was planning on bolting out the door.

"Better not tell that ta ya Uncle Alec. The man takes his sleep serious."

Dean gave him a serious look. "Doesn't he get mad at you? You aren't sleeping."

Eliot grinned, thinking of all the times Alec had tried to convince him to sleep more. "Got into a bad habit of not sleepin' when I was younger, 's a hard one t' break," he answered.

Dean frowned at him. "So what do you do instead?"

Eliot shrugged, "I look after my garden. Sometimes I just drive around, make sure everyone's alright."

"Can I help?" Dean seemed honestly eager, and Eliot thought of all the times he'd not been able to sleep and he'd just sat there waiting for the morning to come.

He glanced back at the bedroom door. Dean needed to work off the last of the caffeine Parker had given him, that much was clear, and he wasn't going to do that sitting around the house. Maybe if he just took him out long enough to wear him out...

"Rules are if I go out I gotta go back to bed after, until it's light out," he made up. "You think you can do that?"

Dean nodded vigorously and ran back into his room, reemerging with a coat and his shoes.

"You gonna be alright like that?" Eliot asked. "Warm enough?" At Dean's nod Eliot picked up two of his own coats off the rack by the door and headed out to his truck in the basement, smiling as Dean yawned widely.

He opened the door for Dean and helped him up the step into the cab of the truck, handing him the coats before wandering around to get into the drivers seat.

He watched Dean carefully, trying to work out how to talk to this small person as he headed out of town on roads barely any quieter for the hour. He tried to remember how his dad had talked to him, and what bits of that had been good and what bits had made him angry. His head hurt already.

"So I know this guy who runs this martial arts class and he's really good," he said eventually. "The kids he teaches have been competing internationally, so he knows what he's talking about. I was wondering if you'd like to go along some time, see if you like it."

"Are they going to make me fight?" Dean asked, seeming more curious than worried.

"Only play fight for a while yet, kiddo. First he'll teach ya how to move and the shapes to make." Eliot shrugged. "If you don't like it, you don't have to keep doin' it."

"Will you be there?"

Eliot glanced over at him, finally getting out of the city traffic. "It's a kid's class," he offered. "But I can stay and watch, or we could do a mixed class if you wanted. But I wouldn't be able to stand right next to ya. You'd have ta stand with the other beginners."

"I'd like that." Dean beamed at him.

"The mixed class?" Eliot grinned, there was never any harm in more training and the teacher really had looked like a good guy. "Sure. You wanna try a kid's one, just see if you like it? We can move to the mixed class next week."

"I can go next week, too?" Dean asked.

"'Course. It's a class." he answered, "If ya enjoy it we can go three times a week."

"Cool."

Eliot grinned. "Yes sir, it is."

- 0 -

It only took twenty minutes in the moonlit cold before Dean was yawning every other breath, his eyelids drooping. Eliot pulled up a last carrot, knocking the mud off it and putting it into the basket. He took the bucket of water off Dean and spread it over his potatoes.

"That's us all done," he lied cheerfully. "Guess we better get back."

"That's the rule." Dean said with a put-upon sigh, shrugging.

"That it is." Eliot laughed, gathering up the tools and stacking them in the back of the shed. He threw his second jacket around Dean's shoulders as the trudged back to the truck. At least he could be sure the kid'd sleep the rest of the night.

- 0 -

Really, they should have guessed that things like this would happen:

It started with Parker on the phone. "Guys. I left him somewhere and now he isn't there any more."

By the time they'd searched the whole block, all three of them were starting to panic.

"Damnit. I knew I should have put a tracker on him!" Hardison exploded.

"Why didn't you?" Eliot growled in response.

"Well maybe I didn't think Parker would just..."

"Guys..." Parker interrupted him. "That's the third police car on this street today."

They both quieted and turned to watch the police car drive slowly past the end of the alley, attentive eyes sweeping over them.

"You think he got picked up?" Eliot asked.

"None of us can walk into a police station. Not in this city." Hardison pointed out.

"Our pictures are on their walls." Parker added.

The boys stared. "How do you know that?" Eliot asked. "No. Never mind. We gotta call Nate. We need a plan."

- 0 -

Nate strode into the police station, trying to look like he knew where he was going. It wasn't as if he'd been avoiding the Boston police station, but it wasn't exactly somewhere he'd memorised a floor plan for. He spotted Dean straight away, sitting on a bench next to a couple of lads who looked dangerous and headed towards him.

He grinned at the boy as he stepped up alongside him, getting a worried frown in return, and knelt at his side. "My name's Nate. Hardison sent me," he whispered. "I'm his spy handler. He sent you this." Nate held out an earbud, letting Dean take it out of his hand.

The frown turned into a look of awed reverence. Dean wiggled the bug into his own ear, scowling at the cold feeling.

"Dean?"

He jumped at Alec's voice inside his ear, and then grinned at Nate.

"Hey, you!" a policeman called from across the room. "Get away from that kid."

Dean stood up quickly, stepping in front of Nate. "This is Nate." he declared. "He's my..." Dean hesitated as Nate's eyes widened and he shook his head almost too gently for him to see.

"Dean, you can't tell the police you and Nate are spies!" Alec said in their ears.

"He's my Nate." he finished with a grin.

It didn't take much of a con to get Dean out of there and into the car where Hardison and Parker and Eliot were waiting. Nate watched as he was hugged and held and welcomed back by the three. He glanced over at Maggie who was leaning on the roof of their car across the lot, smiling gently.

- 0 -

It had been Maggie who'd persuaded Nate to follow the others back to their apartment before they headed home. For a coffee at least, she'd insisted. It was true, they'd barely spoken in the last few months other than the conference call where Sophie had told them all she was pregnant. They were about due for a catch-up.

Hardison had pretty much attacked him as he'd come in through the door, taking him up in a suffocating hug. "Nate, man. We owe you a huge one."

"Not a problem." Nate pulled away uncomfortably.

Eliot wandered over and shook his hand, adding, "Let me make dinner 'fore you head home. Please."

"Well..." Nate started.

"We'd love to." Maggie interrupted him. "And to get to meet your nephew. He's going to make such a good spy one day."

"He's only been here two days," Eliot growled. "We shouldn't be allowed around kids."

"Actually, I was hoping that we'd get a chance to talk to you three." Maggie glanced at Nate and he nodded slowly. "We're thinking about adopting. We wanted to make sure you'd be happy helping out every so often."

Alec and Parker were suddenly *very* still. "Adopting," Parker breathed.

Eliot grinned broadly and completely sincerely. "That's a yes, Maggie. Any time. And anything you need."

"Thank you," she smiled in reply. "All three of you. After everything Nate's told me about the terrible situations you've found children in over the last couple of years... We want to keep helping."

"Can I..." Alec cut himself off. "I mean... I keep an eye on these places, 'cause..." he stumbled to a stop.

"We were wondering if there might be children out there who would benefit from Nate's unique experiences." Maggie rescued him. "If you had any way of..."

"I won't hack that kinda database." Alec said, uncharacteristically quietly. "I don't need that kinda trouble. But I'll tell you which centres, trawl the stuff that's public for you."

"I'll go in with you," Parker said, breathless. "I'll find you the right one."

"Parker." Eliot said, voice serious. "You sure you're up for that? It's a big thing."

"No. Not sure." Parker grinned maniacally. "But I'll do it. I'll help you do it right."

- 0 -

Eliot leant back against the front door as Nate and Maggie headed home, studying Hardison and Parker silently for a moment. "You two..." he started, stepping forwards to pull them both into a rare hug. "You rock my world, seriously."

"Oh, don't worry about it." Parker declared loudly, baffling them both.

"Hey, where'd Dean go?" Hardison asked, stepping back into the living room.

"He was sitting with you." Eliot answered, frowning as he followed him through.

"Well he's not any more. Shit. Dean?" he called, searching around himself. "Shit man. We only just got him back. How'd we lose him again so fast?"

"What if we scared him so bad he ran away?" Eliot asked, frozen in the doorway.

"Guys," Parker hissed from the other side of the room.

"I mean... we probably scared the shit out of him." Eliot continued. "He's gonna run and he's never going to come back."

"Guys," Parker called again.

"Parker," Hardison replied sharply. "We've got to..."

"He's here!" Parker interrupted, pointing sharply down at Dean, fast asleep on the pillows behind the sofa.

Eliot sank down to the ground, boneless in his relief.

"Oh thank God," Hardison said, laughing. "We're totally not cut out for kids."

Parker took a seat next to Dean and patted his head. "I think we're doing alright."

- 0 -

When Dean woke up that night to the smell of Eliot cooking, the first thing he asked was to phone his Nana, and it was with their hearts in their mouths they offered him the phone. Sure that he was going to ask to go home *right now* after his traumatic day, Eliot and Parker retreated to the kitchen.

Hardison waited long enough to hear Dean's opening words.

"Nana, today I got to be a spy! It was AWESOME!"

Hardison smirked and left Dean to talk to his Nana.

- 0 -

Turned out, once everything had settled down and Parker had stopped trying to make a thief out of Dean and Eliot had stopped avoiding him like sharing three words with the kid was going to turn him into a killer, having a kid around didn't disrupt their lives as much as they'd thought. In fact, he filled the free time that Leverage had left. He'd taken away that tense anticipation of something about to happen, and the tendency to pull silly stunts when bored.

It wasn't as if they'd been living to much of a routine anyway. Eliot travelled when he needed to, Parker travelled when she wanted to and Hardison had always been happiest sitting in front of his computer, wherever that might be.

They visited all the the local museums and galleries and Parker only stole a couple of things. Mostly she just moved things between cases to prove she still could. Dean took his first grading with Eliot stood at his shoulder, and won his first coloured belt. Hardison watched like a proud father as his Warcraft character joined his first guild and led them into their first raid.

They'd had their ups and downs, but Hardison looked back over it all and thought they'd done Nana proud. Even for a bunch of criminals.

Thing was, they'd just got into this routine, settling down and never all being away at the same time and reading books at bedtime and... hell, bedtime.

And now Eliot was on the phone with Nana, talking about the plans to take Dean home, making sure she was feeling well enough, making sure the doctors were happy.

Alec had just handed that responsibility over to him, because if he had his way he'd try and keep Dean here, keep him to himself, and Eliot told him that was a thief's way of thinking. He didn't belong to them. He had to go home.

They'd visited his Nana once, just after she'd been released from the hospital. They'd stayed a handful of days, getting her settled in, feeding her good food, making sure the home health care nurse turned up when she was supposed to. She'd been tired and in pain, and it had hurt Hardison to see it, but Eliot had been right there with the heat pads and what he called 'good wholesome foods', which generally involved ingredients expensive enough to make Parker cringe and hours and hours in the kitchen. Dean had hovered, not really understanding how this could be his Nana getting better when he wasn't even allowed to hug her any more.

Three weeks later and she was walking to the shops again, taking the bus to the big town church on Sundays and visiting her friends in the next town over. She was ready for her boy to come home.

- 0 -

The car was too quiet without a little voice filling it with unending chatter. It made them wonder how they'd ever filled so much silence before. Alec was driving, focused entirely on the road in front of them and holding a muttered argument with the sat. nav's occasional interjections. Eliot was sat in the seat behind him, eyes shut, and from where she was sitting - backwards in the front passenger seat - Parker could watch all the tiny movements of his face. She thought he was probably thinking over the last few months from the amount he was smiling, or maybe he was just imagining some really good sex. She'd have to ask him, just in case it was the sex and he had some ideas for things they hadn't tried yet, but it made sense for him to be imagining their time with Dean, given where they'd just been.

"Girl, sit down and put your seatbelt on, you're freaking me out." Alec said in that quiet kind of exasperated that Parker didn't like much.

"We should go back and get him. We're going to be too quiet without him, and Eliot will go back to working too much and you'll get stuck behind your computer like there's glue in your seat or something."

"We'll be alright, darlin'." Eliot said quietly. "Better for him ta be with someone who knows shit about kids."

"We did alright." Hardison objected. "He was fine with us."

"Can we adopt lots of kids?" Parker asked. "A houseful. Orphans who don't have anyone."

Eliot shook his head sharply. "Parker, right now my work's not stable enough for me to promise you I'll be home every time. None of us are legit, all of our paperwork is fake and we have an apartment, not a house." he sighed. "We can't exactly offer a kid a stable home environment. There's reasons we all ended up like we did, we can't do that to a whole generation of kids."

"There's nothing wrong with us." Parker objected. "We're the best at what we do."

"We'd be better, Eliot." Hardison said, serious. "You gotta admit that, we'd be way better."

"Yeah, we would." Eliot conceded. "But not just yet, alright? We need to be... settled. Safe."

Parker went quiet, thinking about that for a moment. "Can we get a puppy?" she asked out of the blue.

"What? Why?" Eliot asked, startled.

"To practice." Parker added gleefully, always glad to be pulling that sharp-frustrated-'there's something wrong with you' tone from Eliot.

"Girl, you scare me some." Eliot replied in a growl.

"Hardison, can we?" she asked.

He didn't answer, just chuckled to himself as the road stretched on homewards and the people he loved argued over whether you could practice for kids using a puppy.

His Nana was healthy and his nephew was safe. He had his people around him, and life was good.