Chapter Text
Peter was more-or-less convinced that RJ – while extremely odd – was a good kid.
Which was one of the reasons he took a double-take when Neal walked into the office with RJ on a child leash. Not least because the kid was eleven and, surely, eleven was too old for a child leash. Right? Wasn’t the cutoff for child leashes four or six or something? Eleven was. Much older than that.
“Neal?” Peter started.
“No, don’t ask,” Neal said.
And Neal looked so damn bone tired that Peter just nodded along and didn’t ask. Fine. So the eleven-year-old was on a child leash. Who cared? Different families did things differently. Different kids needed different kinds of care and oversight.
And, I mean, they did briefly lose RJ a few weeks previous, and then find him in the ceiling with a bunch of baby mice.
RJ was the only one thrilled to find baby mice in the ceiling.
The harness part of RJ’s child leash had a stuffed monkey attached to it. It was very friendly and toddler-friendly looking. Except for the fact that RJ was eleven. He could pass for much younger, sure, but he still looked too old for the child leash, even at the youngest estimate Peter could give his appearance (which was around eight).
Peter cleared his throat and nodded, mostly for his own benefit. “Uh, yeah. As you know, Neal, there was an indoor art display at the zoo—” RJ perked up from his child leash pouting, immediately. “—and a few of the pieces were stolen while the rest were vandalized. We’ll be heading out in twenty. Got it?”
“Zoo art display. Stolen and vandalized items,” Neal echoed. He nodded. Then he turned to RJ. “Looks like we’re going to have that zoo field trip after all.”
It was a Sunday, so Neal probably hadn’t thought he’d be called in. But crime doesn’t sleep and crime scenes can’t be kept untouched indefinitely, so the Sunday call-in had been necessary. Lazy days off? Yeah, those were pretty rare.
“Uh, you can’t just bring a kid to a crime scene, Neal,” Peter said.
“What do you want me to do with him? Tie him outside like a horse in the Old West?” Neal turned back to Peter and gave him the most incredulous, judgmental look that Peter had ever been on the receiving end of, in his life. “Of course he’s going with me. Unless you know where I can find a competent babysitter in the next twenty minutes.”
“It isn’t that hard to find—”
“Peter,” Neal sighed and shook his head slowly. “Have you forgotten how he reacts to being startled? The hiding places we’ve found him? The colour of his eyes? The fact that he’ll only use sign unless he’s extremely comfortable with a person or place? Where am I supposed to find a specialty babysitter that can deal with all of that? Forget twenty minutes, it’s a high, nigh unfulfillable order, in general.”
Peter pressed his lips into a thin line. But he had to admit that Neal was right. RJ was a special case that Peter didn’t know nearly enough specifics about. In fact, RJ was a special case that Peter didn’t necessarily want to know further specifics about. In part because that would be an invasion of RJ’s privacy (and, to a lesser extent, Neal’s privacy, and in part because Peter had a feeling there was some really dark stuff in the near past. Stuff that might require reporting and federal involvement. Peter didn’t want to do that, file that report, that is. He didn’t want to do that to RJ.
“Okay,” Peter sighed. “He needs to be on his best behaviour, Neal. This is a crime scene.”
“I know,” Neal motioned to the leash, as if that was an obvious way for him to acknowledge the importance of keeping RJ on a short leash, metaphorically.
Oh god, Peter hoped that Neal didn’t think “to keep one on a short leash” was supposed to be literal.
(Peter took a long moment to convince himself that, no, Neal wouldn’t think that. Neal was too bright to think something as ridiculous and unlikely as that. ...right?)
--
They’d only just gotten to the gates of the zoo and RJ had already tried to wander away twice. That didn’t bode well for the rest of the day, surely.
There was a pair of cops waiting to escort Peter and Neal to the scene of the crime.
One officer was a short, sturdily built, blond officer. The other was a tall, thin, dark-haired officer. The two of them looked bored up until they noticed Peter and Neal, then they straightened to be at attention and more professional.
And then the noticed RJ.
The confusion on their faces, Peter decided, was worth the inclusion of a wander-prone eleven-year-old's inclusion on the “field trip.”
The cops both looked at each other, attempted to have a silent conversation about how best to ask that the child not be included in the trip to the crime scene, gave up, then turned back to Neal and Peter with looks of utter resignation on the edges of their expressions (just under the veneer of professionalism that they were holding up by bare threads – Peter wondered how long they’d been waiting there for Peter and Neal’s arrival).
“If you’ll follow us, we can show you where everything happened,” the blond one said.
The dark-haired one seemed to have just registered RJ’s leash and was both flabbergasted and rendered speechless. Which attracted the blond’s attention. The blond, then, was also rendered flabbergasted and speechless, because – again – RJ was just too old to be leashed. Seriously!
RJ looked up at them with the listless boredom of a child told “no” more than once, already, in the last hour.
“Lead the way,” Peter said.
The crime had taken place in a centrally located pavilion inside which there were some exotic reptile displays, as well as the one larger room, right at the center, that had been set aside for different activities or art displays, over the years. It was next to the bird house and, frankly, RJ seemed a bit pissed that he wasn’t allowed to go meet all the birds, instead.
RJ was then thrilled by the reptiles – but then extra pouty when they ended up in the large center room, where there were no animals for him to look at. And the artwork, besides being vandalized, was this sort of abstract animal type statue stuff, all made out of wire and recycled metal. RJ was honestly not interested in any of it. He even made a point of sitting down on the floor, back to the “art.”
Neal couldn’t get very close to any of it, then, without dragging his eleven-year-old in some way.
“Neal,” Peter started.
“I know,” Neal waved him off. “I know, I know. I’ll talk to him.”
He took a long few minutes to try and talk RJ into cooperation. And failed miserably. And then, a stroke of genius: “We’ll go look at a few animal enclosures before we go, okay? But only if you behave.”
RJ looked up at him with big, golden eyes, then nodded and scooted over on his butt, toward the “art” displays. (Look, to RJ? It wasn’t really art. He’d seen prettier things thrown out in Gotham alleyways, in his own opinion.)
And, okay. Um. Butt-scooting wasn’t really what Neal or Peter had had in mind, in terms of “cooperating,” but it was a hell of a lot better than what they were getting a minute before, so no one mentioned anything.
Neal was just relieved to have some cooperation. Peter was just relieved that they weren’t wasting more time. And the police that were already on the scene? They just didn’t know how to address the presence of the weird, messy-haired child, in the first place.
--
After some cursory investigation, Neal was obliged to take RJ around the zoo for a bit.
Peter didn’t want to be stuck in the zoo for longer than necessary and sent RJ and Neal off ahead of him, so that they’d hopefully tire of the zoo by the time he finished talking to the police.
Peter was then privy to the absolute nightmare that was the zoo security receiving a call about someone getting into an enclosure. He’d been talking to one of the security guards who got that call over his radio and. Well.
RJ, right?
Peter went with the guard.
Neal stood on one side of the fence, harness in hand.
RJ was balanced on top of the tall enclosure fence. “Get down here!” Neal called. “Don’t make me call Kal!”
RJ stuck his tongue out and signed “away” and “space” at Neal, then continued on his merry way, balancing and walking on the fence. He hopped to the next enclosure’s fence and continued on.
Neal followed. “Richard John!” he snapped.
He was ignored.
And then RJ jumped down into the nextmost enclosure, where the elephants were being kept. He signed his excitable little Z’s and skipped deeper into the enclosure, to the chorus of no less than five adults (a policeman, two security guards for the zoo, Peter, and Neal) calling him back and begging him to leave the enclosure.
A zookeeper was on their way, but it would be a while.
Suffice it to say that everyone was losing it a bit. And Peter suddenly realized why a child leash was needed in the first place, even though RJ was literally eleven years old.
--
The zookeeper arrived to find five burnt-out, dead-inside adults leaning against the outer fence of the elephant exhibit. Inside the exhibit, RJ was just chilling on the back of one of the elephants. A former circus elephant from Haly’s Circus named Zitka. (Peter had a feeling that there was a story there, about why RJ would go out of his way to go to that elephant in particular, but all he cared about, by then, was getting RJ out of the enclosure and home with Neal, where RJ wouldn’t be able to cause anymore trouble for the day.)
(Peter hoped that Kal would be back and able to keep RJ by the next day. He didn’t know if he could survive anymore RJ shenanigans if they continued, this way.)
The zookeeper actually wasn’t any help, though.
RJ sat up straighter and looked over at them all, about when the zookeeper was arriving. Then proceeded to indicate to Neal that he was hungry. That was how they actually got him out of the enclosure. He got hungry.
“Please don’t bring him back,” one of the security guards whispered.
Peter was nodding tiredly, but Neal actually managed to look offended. Peter managed to guide him away before he could be verbally offended at the security guard’s request.