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Peter rubbed his temples, he had a headache on top of a headache. It was just supposed to be a quick and easy smuggling case. A group of people just smuggling art and making forgeries, no big deal. Peter looked over at the four people sitting on the curb cowering under Neal’s watchful glare.
Nope. It hasn’t changed at all. Neal was still over there hugging the four kids one by one for the last half hour while giving them the weirdest safety lecture he’d ever heard. –Don't roll your eyes at them, yes even if it's your fifth kidnapping. They don't know they're amateurs, and annoying them by implying they're incompetent might make them unpredictable– The blond in a purple sweater rolled her eyes and shoved the skinny my-eyebags-pay-an-extra-luggage-fee kid further into the relentless hug of his worried CI. The guy looked simultaneously delighted and resigned to his fate as a sacrificial teddy bear.
Three hours ago:
Peter stood by the projector in the conference room.
“We followed the smugglers to this location,” Peter shows what else but an old warehouse criminals have no imagination sometimes, “according to our information we expect them to do the hand off tonight we're going to take a few agents and raid the warehouse. The warrant just came in and now we’ve got them. They may have run but they can't hide from us.”
“Oh fun, we’re going to chase after criminals in a dirty warehouse again.” Neal said.
“I could leave you on mortgage fraud.” Peter arched his eyebrow at Neal.
“Dirty warehouses, you know how I feel about dirty warehouses Peter. I might get my suit dirty.” He whined with a smirk on his face.
Peter leveled a harsh glare at the man’s childish teasing. Jones hid his own grin behind his cup of coffee and Diana didn’t even bother to hide the roll of her eyes. Neal’s levity relaxed the room once again so that the agents could focus on the mission.
One hour ago:
“Remember the main objective is to catch them red-handed smuggling the goods out of the country. This should be an easy mission, there aren’t supposed to be but a few guards watching the loading right now we should be able to get everything wrapped up in no time.”
Had Peter never heard of the ‘don’t jinx yourself mentality’ because with that pep talk it was no wonder the whole operation went to hell in a gilded handbasket. It didn’t start out too badly. Jones and Neal walked into the building acting like they were supposed to be meeting with the big boss. The boss who happened to be out to dinner with his mistress and issued a ‘do not disturb under pain of death’ warning to his crew before he left.
“You, you lackey, where is Everett? He was supposed to be meeting me here tonight.” Neal snapped imperiously at the second in command.
“What do you think you're doing here?” He growled at the two of them.
The guy was your typical no necked football linesman whose glory days were well past him. He was definitely paid for his hitting skills not his thinking skills.
“I’m conducting business, now where is Everett?”
Neal looked down his nose over his Ray Bans at the man. Yes, he was still wearing his Sunglasses indoors like he thought that made him look cool or more likely like he thought that he was anonymous with just a pair of shades on. Neal was acting like the worst kind of demanding entitled rich boy. He knew the type well having gone to school with so many of them. While he personally never was the kind of rich kid to treat everyone around him as a thing, Gotham Academy had given Dick plenty of examples of how it should look.
“Fine, if he isn’t here I guess I will just have to get the goods from the help then.” Neal rolled his eyes and pretended like he didn’t notice the twitchy men scattered around the warehouse watching them like they wanted to just shoot the duo and be done with it. Jones shifted his weight back on his other foot, looking all the world like a bodyguard not being paid enough money to deal with his employer's stupidity.
“Well, come on then. Show me the merchandise.”
Neal crossed his arms across his chest and tapped his foot in irritation. Really he was kind of surprised that the guy hadn’t threatened him yet at all. No-neck actually had patience, or maybe just not enough imagination to figure out when someone was making fun of him. Yeah it was probably the second one. Ingrained habits worked in their favor, he had been following orders his whole life, so he stashed his gun and led them further into the back room.
That is when the whole thing went tits up. In the back room the smuggling operation wasn’t fake gems or paintings, it was people. There were rows of caged children waiting to be shipped out to a buyer.
“Holy shit.” Peter cursed lowly into the coms. “We need a bigger team, stat.” Dick and Jones didn’t hear anything else because someone remembered the mute button but it was clear that the FBI was now on high alert.
“What kind of kid were you looking for?” No neck asked, as the two men stood there in shock.
‘Tch’ a soft scoffing noise sounded loud in the near silence but that sounded like the oh so familiar ‘tch’ of his baby brother. Neal whirled toward the source of the noise, his eyes wide with shock and fear.
“Umm, boss we got trouble.” Jones said, even he wasn’t sure if he was talking to Peter or to Neal’s cover. Dick looked away from his baby bat’s black eye just in time to see a two by four swinging at his head. Fortunately, he was flexible.
“I think, I will just take these three right here,” he said as he let his muscle memory fling him out of the way of the board.
Unfortunately, muscle memory kicked in and he followed that up with a high kick that actually tore half the seams in his suit and then proceeded to decimate the guards in the building. Before Jones could actually get his gun up and demand the men freeze Dick had already bounced across the warehouse knocking people out with suspicious ease for a non-criminal informant.
“Why did no one tell me you were kidnapped, baby bat?” Dick wailed as the last goon hit the floor.
“Freeze FBI.”
Peter and Diana rushed in with tac vests and guns drawn, hoping to still be in time to save their team. Jones was in the middle of the warehouse tying the last of the goons in zip ties he’d found somewhere and Neal was currently picking the lock on one of the cages full of people. While lecturing them on how to properly be a hostage.
“I don’t care that they had a turtle Baby Bat, you still should have taken the opportunity to escape while you were still in the city, not provoke them to kidnap you.”
Peter stopped listening for his own sanity sake.
“How long until CPS is going to get here?” he asked his earpiece instead.
Neal finished picking the lock on the cage with half a dozen kids he’d been lecturing and then surged at them in a desperate attack. He seemed to grow five new arms as he started pulling kids into a hug. He grabbed ahold of three of the kids into one big hug and wouldn’t let them go, popping a kiss on top of the littlest ones head despite said kids loud and pointy protests. The girl looked over to one of the other boys in the cage and pulled him in too. Neal looked at her quizzically.
“He’s one of us.” she shrugged.
“No shit, we got another one?” Neal’s face got all soft and welcoming. “Welcome to the family kiddo.”
“Thanks, I think.”
Now:
Which brings us back to the present scene where the White Collar crew is watching his CI is currently yelling at (and hugging) some of the richest teenagers in the world. Hadn’t that been a shock finding out Bruce Wayne’s kids had been kidnapped. Then discovering that Neal had the personal number of Mr. Wayne himself. Yeah, that was another headache.
A limo pulled up to the warehouse. Before the car even fully stopped Bruce rushed out of the back. Bruce rushed in to hug his kids so fast Neal got caught in the hug too.
“Is everybody okay?”
Bruce pulled back a little to assess each child. Running a practiced eye on them looking for injuries, looking to see how bad the injuries were. He gently touched Damian's cheek below his blackened eye.
“Anything else,” He asked.
“Thomas was actually the worst off, father.” Damian eyed.
“It’s just a cut,” Duke pouted, as Bruce started to examine him closely for the missed injury. Duke rolled his eyes and rolled up his pant leg showing off a cut that was bleeding sluggishly.
“Why didn’t you say so kiddo? We could have had it already cleaned up by now.” Neal frowned at his newest baby brother.
“Speaking of not saying anything, why wasn’t I told they were kidnapped?” Neal turned on Bruce mother-fluffing Wayne and started to chew him out, Peter felt his soul leave his body right then and there. “And why wasn’t I told we got a new kid? Just ‘cause I have a two mile radius doesn't mean I can’t do anything fun.”
“Oh, you two are together?” Peter said.
All six of the Wayne’s looked over at Peter in horror.
“Umm, Peter, are you feeling alright? Did you hit your head or something, you're talking all crazy right now.” Dick tried to deflect Peter’s growing suspicions. He did not help his case one bit by not moving out of Bruce's arms while he said it though, sue him he hadn’t been hugged by his dad in years.
“You guys are together, and you’re co-parenting all of his kids.”
“Well, umm, no but yes.”
“What?” Bruce and the FBI agents all asked in various stages of confusion.
“Don't you remember I have partial custody of little ‘D here because of that thing, and then I asked Alfred to get the lawyers to put me for joint custody of any future kids you adopted so I’m probably officially dading two of the four we have here and unofficially…” Dick shrugged. He’d been unofficially dading his siblings since Tim joined the colony.
Neal was the cause of all his headaches. Peter Burke just whimpered this was supposed to be a nice easy smuggling operation, not a family heart to heart with some of the richest people in the country. Oh God, they had probably stumbled on one of Neal’s long term cons, they were going to have to tell Bruce Wayne that his boy-toy was actually a con man trying to take him for all his money. Peter wondered if it was too early to retire.