Fandom: Nicky, Ricky, Dicky and Dawn

Title: Hold Onto Me (You're All I Have)

Summary: "Don't talk to strangers." -Anne Harper, "Mall in the Family." The kids broke every rule- lotion, helicopter, make up, losing your pants- except for that one. But what if someone had broken that rule? When Ricky and Dicky are kidnapped, Dawn and Nicky have to rescue them. Meanwhile, Tom and Anne search for their missing children, hitting dead end after dead end. Will the Harper family ever be whole again? AU, kidnapping

Chapter One: Don't Let Me Go

"Don't talk to strangers." -Anne Harper, "Mall in the Family"

Ricky swallowed a yelp as he attended to tug the helicopter out of his blonde hair, prying at the painful tangles. The blue toy was tied in his hair so tightly, he'd probably have to cut out a chunk of his lemon colored locks to remove it.

Ricky plopped down on a bench in the mall and continued yanking on the plastic object, wrestling with it and pulling out a few clumps of hair, wincing at the sting that accommodated each pull.

"You need some help?" someone asked, a laugh causing Ricky to lift his gaze.

There was a man standing beside him. He looked friendly enough with short brown hair and a short beard. His gray eyes were reflected in wire rimmed spectacles, and he looked fairly young, possibly being in his late twenties. His baseball cap was a bright blue, and his clothes consisted of a forest green, short sleeved shirt and blue jeans. His smile was kind, and although he chuckled, he didn't seem to be doing so cruelly or mockingly, as most people would've done if they saw Ricky's predicament.

"Uh, sure… if you don't mind," Ricky added, and the man seated himself beside Ricky on the bench, easily untangling the helicopter with his nimble fingers and handing the warped toy to the ten year old.

"Thanks," Ricky stated, gratefully.

"I was actually wondering if you could help me," the man said. "I'm looking for the exit. Mind showing me?"

"Of course not," Ricky told him.

Ricky was not stupid or reckless. In fact, Ricky was just the opposite- smart, cautious, possibly bordering on having trust issues. He had constantly been told don't talk to strangers, as every kid was told lectured on from the moment they could walk. But Ricky was also nice; a little arrogant at times, maybe, but if a man asked him for directions, Ricky wasn't going to say no, especially since the man had just helped him.

Ricky stood from the bench, followed by the man, and they started approaching the nearest exit, which was just down the hall.

"My name is Carl. What about you?" The man asked, holding out a hand.

"Ricky," the blonde replied, shaking the offered hand. "Here's the exit."

Ricky gestured to the door that read Exit in black letters, the name of the mall printed beneath the four letter word. There weren't very many people near the exit at this time of the day, and the few people around were just passing down the hallway without paying any attention to the ten year old boy and the man.

"Thank you so-" Carl began, but he was interrupted by a familiar voice.

"Ricky!" A boy with long, shaggy brown hair stopped beside them, and Ricky opened his mouth to greet him before stopping short as he noticed that the other boy was in his boxers.

"I lost my pants," the boy said, which seemed a little unnecessary.

"I can see that, Dicky," Ricky sighed.

"Your brother, I presume?" Carl chortled.

Ricky nodded. "Dicky, how did you lose your pants?"

"Well-" Dicky began.

Ricky held up a hand in a stop motion. "Never mind. I don't want to know. I'm sorry, Carl. We need to go find his pants and find our brother and sister," Ricky told the boy, grabbing Dicky's arm and beginning to lead him away.

He two boys were very suddenly and a little painfully yanked back by the backs of their shirts, and a hand clamped over each of their mouths.

"You two aren't going anywhere," Carl hissed. In only a moment, his entire demeanor had changed from a friendly guy to a scary, mean man with an icy gaze. "You two are going to follow me, stay quiet, and do everything I say. Make a sound or try anything, and I will kill one of you and make the other watch."

Ricky felt a shiver pass through his body at the threat, and he could feel Dicky trembling beside him as the man removed his hands from their mouths and shoved them through the door and into the sunlight that glared down upon the parking lot.

Carl dragged them by their collars to a blue van, and Ricky stared at passerby in desperation, hoping his fearful gaze would get their attention, but anyone that noticed simply thought it was a father taking his two misbehaving sons to the car and not two boys being kidnapped.

The door of the blue van slid open, and a woman with red hair leaned out of the door, glaring at Carl.

"What took you so long?" She murmured.

"I was only going to take the blonde one, but his brother showed up, so looks like we got a bonus," Carl sneered, pushing the boys into the car.

He woman grabbed them and threw them to the floor of the van while a third man- an African American man that looked so normal, like any person Ricky would see on the street, that it made the situation even more terrifying- grabbed two rolls of duct tape, looming over the brothers with a menacing glare.

"Please-" Ricky began, fearfully. "At least let my brother go. You didn't want him. Please."

"No," Dicky growled, his tone more intimidating and more serious than any other Ricky had ever heard his typically oblivious and laid back brother speak in. "I'm not leaving you, Ricky."

"Neither of you are leaving," the red haired woman said, sounding frighteningly calm as she nodded to the third man, who started wrapping duct tape around Dicky's ankles. "You're our property now."

"Victoria, start driving," Carl told the brown haired woman driving, and without turning around, she drove the car out of the parking lot and onto the interstate.

"I'm sorry I got us into this," Ricky whispered to his younger brother. "I shouldn't have been speaking to strangers."

"Ricky, you couldn't have known he would kidnap us," Dicky pointed out, and the usually dumb-as-a-sack-of-rocks boy actually sounded smart, and the sentence be said comforted Ricky, although guilt still pooled in his stomach.

Ricky gave a small bitter laugh. "Thanks, Dicky, but I'm older. I should be comforting you, not the other way around."

"You're older than me by less than ten seconds," Dicky chuckled, but the laugh sounded hollow to Ricky's ears, and it physically hurt the blonde boy because Dicky was always happy, always laughing. His laughter should never sound empty; his smile should never be weak, and it certainly shouldn't be fake.

"I'm still older," Ricky said.

Dicky shrugged. "Ricky, we're the Harper Quads. One person doesn't protect everyone else. We protect each other."

"Stop talking," the third man said, flatly, as he finished binding Ricky's wrists.

"Quads?" Carl repeated. "As in quadruplets? I never would've guessed," he said with a smirk. "Ricky Harper and Dicky Harper… Sabrina, look up those names."

Sabrina, the red haired woman, withdrew a phone from her pocket and typed in the names of the kidnapped boys.

"Ricky Eddie Harper, age ten, and Dicky Morgan Harper, also age ten. Sons of Anne and Tom Harper, attend Edgewood Elementary, and they live at 1317 Squire Lane. They have two siblings. Nick Albert Harper, age ten, and Dawn Quinn Harper, also age ten. They are quadruplets," she clarified.

"You do have a brother and a sister," Carl realized, recalling Ricky's words from earlier. "And now, we know what they look like and where you live. Unless you want your siblings to pay for any misbehavior I see from you two, I suggest you do as we say."

Ricky and Dicky nodded, obediently, before the third man slapped duct tape over their mouths.

Ricky reached over with his bound hands and rested his fingers on Dicky's arm, trying to use the minimal contact they could achieve while bound as a comforting gesture.

Dicky reached over and curled his own fingers around Ricky's, and the smallest contact between the brothers was enough to give them a sense of relief, however small the feeling was.

"We need to find Ricky and Dicky before anything else. If we show up at the phone store without them, Mom and Dad will know something's up," was the first thing Dawn said when she finally located Nicky, who was rubbing his eyes and whimpering about getting lotion in them or something. "Do you remember where they said they were going?"

"No, I wasn't listening," Nicky informed her, pulling his hands away from his eyes and blinking at her.

"Neither was I!" Dawn exclaimed, throwing her hands into the air in frustration.