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The thing was, Dick had never been good at staying away from the action. He certainly hadn’t become the first child superhero by sitting back and letting others do all the work. The desire to be up in the mix crawled under his skin like a perpetual itch, begging him to get involved.
Neal Caffrey, however, was not supposed to want to run headfirst into a gun fight. No, Neal Caffrey preferred to talk his way out of trouble. He was decidedly non-violent, despite his long list of other criminal skills, and Dick’s entire work with the FBI kind of relied on them never finding out otherwise.
Which was fine. Mostly.
For all that Dick hated to watch from the sidelines, the thrill of a deep cover performance sated most of his restlessness. It took a lot of work to make Neal Caffrey look effortless, and the challenge was honestly more fun that he’d thought it would be.
But the thing was, the longer he was Neal, the easier the performance became. And the less he’d had to focus on his cover, the more bored he’d become.
Now, almost a year into the op, it was no longer even remotely exciting to sit in the van while his team pulled off some sting to nab the latest wannabe forger. It was actually pretty excruciating, and not even the thought of sneaking out patrolling later made it any better.
He needed something interesting to break up the monotony of minor cover ops (mostly boring) and paperwork (always boring― he’d dropped out of business school for a reason). At this point, it didn’t even matter what kind of operation it was, Dick was determined to get Peter to let him out of the van.
Slowly but surely, he’d been weaning him down.
“C’mon Peter, it’s not like this operation is even dangerous! We know no there’s no one inside the warehouse but those potentially stolen paintings.”
“Neal, you know I can’t let you in on something that has even the slightest chance of going wrong. There are rules for a reason,” Peter said, clearly exasperated by what had become a recurring argument. “What if something happened and you got stuck in the middle of a shoot-out?”
Dick rolled his eyes. “Nothing’s going to happen. And I’ve read the regulations, you know. I know that I’m allowed to join reconnaissance like this, especially if my skills are relevant, which they definitely are.”
Peter sighed. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Nope!” Dick replied, his face plastered with Neal’s trademark smile.
“Alright, fine. But you’d better do everything I say. If something goes wrong you’re not trained to deal with it and I don’t want you getting hurt.”
If Dick were a lesser actor he would’ve rolled his eyes at that statement. Instead, he just lied through his teeth.
“Of course, Peter.”
***
When they finally pulled up to their target, Dick was practically vibrating with excitement. It was actually pretty sad that such a tame excursion had him so delighted. He hadn’t even lied when he told Peter that it was a relatively safe op. All they were doing was investigating a warehouse that potentially owned a new art trafficking ring. Their intel said that they were housing at least one of the stolen Picasso’s that the Harvard team had been trying to track down for the last two months. Compared to what he got up to as Nightwing, hell, even what he’d done as Robin, this was about as interesting as a trip to the DMV.
Man, he really needed to get out of Neal’s anklet more often.
As they exited the van, Dick was treated to yet another “Do what I say Neal” lecture from Peter. He barely heard any of it over his slightly embarrassing Pavlovian joy at strapping kevlar to his chest (even if it was, in his opinion, egregiously bulky).
Once Peter checked that Dick’s vest was properly secure (it was), they had the all clear to enter the warehouse.
With a last warning look, Peter gestured for Dick to follow, and they finally entered the building carefully and quietly.
For a while, everything proceeded according to plan. They managed to find a stache of art that Dick was able to immediately use his Caffrey skills to identify as stolen. It was well worth the weeks of pestering just to see Peter’s face in person as he launched into a long-winded explanation of every minute error in the pieces. They moved slowly, using only their small flashlights to illuminate the dark space, lest their mysterious target get word that they were there.
But, of course, despite their endless precaution, something had to go wrong.
Just as they were about to call in backup to properly remove the paintings, the full warehouse lights flew on, and the sounds of loud footsteps rang through the space.
In walked a short, but rather large man. He looked almost like a cartoon version of an old school gangster, three-piece suit and all. If Dick hadn’t grown up staring down people much more committed to the bit, the man might’ve been imposing. This man was certainly no Cobblepot, just a wannabe gangster who thought dressing like he was in the wrong century gave him gravitas.
The wannabe gangster was flanked by two men who really could only be described as goons: tall and broad and strapped to all hell. Dick didn’t need over a decade of vigilante experience to know this was a problem, especially not as the new arrivals caught sight of a team’s worth of standard issues aimed right at them.
“FBI!” Peter called out. “Don’t move!”
It was like something out of a bad police drama. Sometimes Dick couldn’t help but laugh at the formalities of non-vigilante law enforcement.
Gangster Wannabe, who was so blatantly the man they’d been chasing, didn’t seem particularly perturbed to have his warehouse invaded. No, Dick realized, he looked like he’d just been given an early birthday present as he smiled smugly.
“Now would be a good time to uphold your end of the deal,” Gangster Wannabe called over his shoulder, with the confidence of a man who was not staring down the barrel of multiple guns.
Dick followed his gaze as it carried to a dark corner near the door. An all too familiar mechanized grunt echoed out into the room as none other than the Red Hood stepped out of the shadows.
Fuck. What the hell was Jason doing in New York?
Dick scanned his memories of the most recent mission updates he’d received, but came up blank.
He locked eyes with his brother as he approached, and anyone but a bat would have missed the nearly imperceptible shift in his weight that Dick knew meant he was equally surprised that their paths had crossed.
Peter tensed up beside him, and Dick was reminded that a team of FBI agents would probably consider the appearance of the former top of the Most Wanted list a serious issue.
“Well?” Gangster Wannabe asked pointedly. “Don’t tell me the infamous Red Hood doesn’t live up to his reputation.”
Jason stepped forward, and Dick felt Peter flinch, but thankfully he didn’t shoot.
Dick’s mind raced a mile a minute, desperately trying to find the best way out of the mess in front of him. Clearly this was the trafficker they’d been hunting. Had Jason not been there, it likely would've been an easy pivot into an arrest. But the presence of the Red Hood complicated things, and not just because he scared the FBI agents. No, if he was here playing hired mercenary then it definitely meant that Gangster Wannabe was into much darker stuff than art trafficking. Hell, with Jason so deep into it and so far from Gotham, Dick could probably guess exactly what kind of trafficking this guy was really doing.
Locking eyes with his brother, Dick made a slight gesture. No one was looking at him, the only person not visibly armed, so no one questioned the signal, nor his deliberate glance at the wall behind him.
With the slightest of nods, the Red Hood raised his gun and fired.
The bullet narrowly flew past the assembled agents and hit a switchboard behind them, plunging them all into darkness before anyone could return fire.
From there it was both chaos and routine.
Both sides scrambled to fight in the dark, and panic erupted all around. Bodies flailed about with weapons as no one dared fire blind.
Moving quickly, Dick maneuvered through the chaos with ease until he was at Jason’s side. Together, they picked off the goons with a few well-aimed blows and some handy zip-ties.
Just as they dropped, the FBI agents managed to get their flashlights on.
As light filled the room, Dick realized a second too late that the Wannabe Gangster had pulled a knife and was lunging for a weak spot in Jason’s armour. He slashed hard, and Dick was sure that it was a nasty one.
“Fuckin’ idiot,” Jason cursed under his breath, but quickly fought off his attacker until he crumbled to the ground.
He turned to Dick and winced.
“Don’t fuck this up,” he bit out, just loud enough for Dick to hear.
And then he was gone, disappearing into the shadows again.
Dick cursed under his breath. Jason leaving before guaranteeing the kids were safe meant he was worse off than he’d thought. He needed to wrap this up, fast, before Jason did something stupid like try to stitch himself up.
Somebody managed to get the lights back on, and Dick made sure he was back behind Peter wearing his best “I’m just as confused as you are” look.
Dick’s team looked dazed, not sure what to make of the three suspects all being tied up neatly. Their confusion was clearly only exacerbated by the peculiar note stuck to the Wannabe Gangster’s head.
Dick almost laughed as he beheld Jason’s particular brand of dramatics. In bold letters across his face read the phrase CHILD STEALER, followed by an address.
“I think you’re going to need to call in reinforcements, Peter,” Dick said with a smirk. “This is way above my pay-grade.”
Peter simply sighed and pulled out his phone to make the necessary calls.
Dick turned to the rest of the team and felt himself smile more genuinely than he usually did as Neal.
“So, since I’m not really supposed to be anywhere near a violent scene, who wants to give me a ride home?”