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Dick loved Christmas, he would even dare to say that it was his favourite holiday ever.
Sure it might seem cliche, but it had all the essential things: Family bonding time, cookies, presents and lastly all the Christmas traditions.
The Wayne family had endless Christmas traditions, Dick would even be as confident to say that each time Bruce adopted a kid there would be added another thirty traditions, each kid came with previous traditions and Bruce being the loveable idiot he was would try to do each and every tradition despite the fact that their December month was filled to the brim with various traditions.
There was his Christmas bucket list, Christmas dinner at the Wayne manor and more importantly the whole month of december was basically a tradition. Each day had a new adventure, a new memory waiting to be unlocked.
He vividly remembered all the memories he had gathered throughout the years at the manor. Damian’s first Christmas was one of his favourites, it was the greatest gift of them all to watch his youngest brother experience the greatest holiday ever.
There was of course also the annual watch of Home alone and several corny Hallmark movies. He remembered each of his siblings' wonder when they watched home alone for the first time, Jason had been enthralled, Tim was a different case, he had looked through each and every flaw that Kevin's plan had.
This year was different.
Everyone who belonged at the manor was going to be busy, Cass and Steph were in Hong Kong having the times of their lives, Tim and Damian were travelling across Europe chasing after some alien weapon smugglers, and Dick knew that Barbara would be spending the holidays with Gordon.
Bruce, Alfred, Duke and Jason were the only ones unaccounted for, but Jason wouldn't be caught dead in the manor, without at least three siblings to bother Bruce.
Jason and Duke had both stated that they would be working but Dick had a sneaking suspicion that they were spending the holidays together.
Dick would have lived to go home and cherish all the Christmas traditions but he was stuck being undercover, he had tried his best to keep up with the traditions.
He had gotten Peter to complete the bucket list with him, and he had a half eaten gingerbread house sitting on his table to attest to that.
The sad thing was that Peter and Elizabeth were out of town, so Dick couldn't even try and get them to experience the world's greatest Christmas traditions.
Diana was there to experience them either, she was visiting her socialite parents and possibly attending the Wayne Christmas gala.
Clinton Jones was the only man left.
It didn’t seem like he had any plans for the Christmas month, and he had been scheduled to work on all the important dates.
Dick had honestly gotten the impression that Jones didn't even want to celebrate christmas. He had been looking back at the old records when he found out that Jones had never ever taken Christmas eve off.
When Dick figured that out, he had begun to set a plan in motion. Neal Caffrey had offered to spend Christmas eve at the office along with Jones.
It might seem small but Dick was a Christmas mastermind.
Dick had spent the days up to Christmas eve packing a bag. The bag contained Christmas movies, Alfred’s amazing christmas food and most importantly it had Partners for two packed.
It was a nearly foolproof plan, or that was what Dick had believed.
The moment that he showed up at the office Jones had been sitting at his desk reading a case file, he didn’t even lift his head when Neal entered the room.
“Hi Jones!” Dick’s clear voice rang out through the room, the agent just muttered a response and continued reading the case file.
Dick strutted over to the agents desk and leaned over to try and get a glimpse of the file. The name of the case was “The Christmas ghost”, Dick didn’t get the chance to read more before Jones closed the file and stared directly at him.
“Hi Neal” Jones said with a bitter tone “What did i do to deserve you being here?”
Dick chuckled to himself “You decided to work on Christmas eve”
“What’s wrong with that?” Jones questioned, narrowing his eyes “Somebody has to do it”
Dick held his hands up defensively “I didn’t say that there was anything wrong with that”
“Okay?”
“Sooo…” Dick dragged the end out “What case are we working on?”
Jones looked like he was seconds away from gutting him “No”
“No?” Dick smiled slyly “So, I can just… start working on a case by myself, a case like uh what was it called?” he acted like he just got an idea “The christmas ghost”
Jones groaned “Fine” he sighed deeply “If you are going to bother me you might as well be useful”
He stood up from his desk and led Dick over to a covered white board, dramatically Jones took the piece of cloth that was covering the board and pulled it off. It revealed a board full of pictures of paintings and blurred camera footage.
“This” He took a dramatic pause “Is the ultimate christmas case”
The following minutes were filled by Jones explaining the case and all the details that it enthralled.
“The Christmas ghost” was Jones’ personal nightmare, the case was in broad terms about a thief, who each Christmas eve stole artwork, there was no pattern and each heist was performed flawlessly, there were no mistakes, there were no suspects, only mysteries.
“- Now our job is to figure out where our perp is going to hit”
Dick hummed and looked over the white board, Jones had really put everything into solving this case “We can rule out places he already has been”
Jones nodded and crossed off a few names of art galleries.
“Wait-” Dick stopped and looked closer at the places that had been robbed “All the places are located in East New York”
Jones looked up from his paper and was about to barge in with a comment about him being wrong but he looked over the places that had already been hit and it seemed like a light went off in his head.
Quickly he circled all the art galleries located in the East part of New York, he started looking over the places as well and then hurried over to his computer and started typing something.
“What did you realise?” Dick asked, he had no clue what he had missed, but it felt wrong to be left in the dark about a case, he should be way better than a normal FBI agent.
Jones didn’t answer him right away but after a few more searches he turned his computer towards Dick “All the places that have been hit had all gotten a new art exhibition”
“Right” Dick went over to the list and started crossing off the places that hadn’t gotten a new exhibition.
Jones looked at him weirdly “How did you know that?”
“Well I am still allowed to have my own hobbies despite being a CI”
“Mhm, and your hobbies include knowing each and every art exhibition in New York City” Jones shook his head “That isn’t concerning at all”
“Oh come on!” Dick threw his arms out in a gesture that was meant to say ‘I am deeply offended’ “I have gotten better-”
Jones cut him off “-Better at knowing the FBI”
“Fuck off”
The pair worked quickly and crossed off the names of more galleries, until they were down to one.
“Are you sure that this is it?” Jones asked warily.
“Yeah, there are no other options”
Jones nodded and headed over to grab his keys “Come, we are going on a hunt”
Dick laughed and said “Get in loser, we are going ghost hunting”
The drive over to the gallery was surprisingly short, there was no traffic. Jones was a horrendous driver, Dick was glad that he had a seatbelt on, several times Jones had crossed a red light and his only reason as to why was that ‘There was no one’. Dick had thought he was a bad driver but Jones definitely took the crown.
Jones had on the drive there called up the owner of the gallery and he had dropped by his place to get a set of keys, it would look bad if a FBI agent had broken into a gallery.
Quietly or as quietly as Jones could he locked them into the gallery, quickly locking the doors after them.
It was weird walking through an empty gallery, there were no tourists walking around looking at art and there were no tour guides who with a monotone voice told tourists about the different art pieces.
“Let’s split up” Jones suggested “We can cover more ground that way”
“Great idea” Dick said sarcastically “Let’s do it just like in the horror movies”
“Stop being a baby”
That settled that, the pair split up and their search began, it was only later on that Dick realised that they had no way of contacting each other, but at that point it was too late. In front of him stood a petite figure, in the hands of the figure was a gun and it was pointed directly at him.
“Well hello!” Dick said loudly “What a fine evening this is”
“Shut up” A fine voice said “There is a FBI agent in the building”
“Wow, really?” Dick said sarcastically, he might as well be shot, that would add to the charges “I hadn’t noticed”
“You really are a next level dick” The figure retorted “Now move along, hostage”
“Hostage?” Dick said “Buy me dinner first”
The figure didn’t respond, they just kept directing where Dick had to go, at last they ended up in front of an Andy Warhol.
“Stand still”
Dick did as he was told.
Footsteps could be heard in the distance and suddenly a voice yelled out “FBI freeze and put your hands up in the air”
The figure didn’t do as told, they just pointed their gun directly at Dick, who stood within arms reach of them. “Don’t move or i will shoot your little pet”
Jones’ face scrunched up in disgust “You can keep your hostage, I don’t want him back”
“Haha” The thief said with a monotone voice.
In a split second Dick reacted, the thief who was busy with bantering with Jones had mistakenly forgotten about her hostage, thankfully her hostage knew how to handle a hostage situation, Dick kicked his leg up hitting their arm, which resulted in them dropping their gun which Dick caught.
He pointed the gun towards the thief “Hands above your head”
************
Their night ended on the White Collar roof top, side by side they sat and enjoyed some food that Neal had brought in his bag.
“So” Neal chuckled slightly “This was fun”
Jones nodded and took another serving of the food that Neal had packed.
“Your little trick was cool” Jones smiled “I won’t tattle to Peter”
“Excuse me?” Neal’s smile grew far too wide. “Did I just hear you say that I am cool?”
And with that comment everything was back to normal, Jones sighed as he realised that Neal could never just let a moment be, it had to be ruined by his overly inflated ego, but it was fine, the con man had helped him close his case.