Work Text:
It’s a simple recon mission. There’s a meeting at the docks tonight between two well known gang members. Whispers from underground say that it’s a trade, a few batches of weapons for a superweapon.
If the superweapon is what it is believed to be, it can cause a lot of damage. It’s a metal barrel that, if triggered, releases deadly amounts of sarin gas, which can lead to death in minutes. It’s an incredibly painful way to go, so Dick needs to get that barrel and deliver it to the JLA before the entire city is exposed.
The docks are generally quiet this time of night. Good. Hopefully that means he’ll be able to get in and get out. He only has about three hours before he has to be at work, and he’d like to sleep for as long as he can before he has to sit through another boring day of mortgage fraud.
It’s never that simple. All he wants is a smooth night, and he can’t even get that.
The bust, predictably, goes south. Thankfully, no potentially catastrophic nerve gases were released into the environment, so he counts that as a win. Unfortunately, gang members never travel alone, and Nightwing’s move to New York is well-documented, so it should have been obvious that both gang members would have brought backup.
Bruce would be disappointed in that oversight.
Despite the setbacks, the mission was a success. He returns to June’s and immediately pulls out his laptop—the one with multiple layers of encryption, of course—and gets to work writing his report while the event is still fresh in his mind.
Something most outsiders might not expect about working with the JLA is the enormous amount of paperwork that comes with it. Bruce is nothing if not meticulous, so writing reports after a mission is a requirement. If the police are involved in any capacity—and they almost always are—then the reports take that much longer as Dick searches for the badge numbers of those involved. Dick had always hated that part of working with Batman, but he understands that it is a necessary evil.
The mission took two hours, and writing his report is sure to take a good amount of time, so the likelihood of him getting any sleep is dwindling as the minutes pass. Oh, well. He has operated on less sleep in more dire situations.
As the sound of his keyboard fades into white noise and the increasing amount of light in the apartment no longer registers, he feels exhaustion begin to tug at him. Dick decides to rest his eyes. Just for a moment.
Dick’s phone is ringing. Why is it ringing? Who is calling him?
He lets it go to voicemail. If it’s that important, they know where he lives.
His phone starts ringing again, and he lifts his head with a groan. His eyes are still closed to shield them from the light, so he finds his phone by touch. He lifts it to his ear with an annoyed, “What?”
“Where are you?” Peter’s voice startles him, and he straightens in his chair.
He fell asleep. Dick glances at the time and curses when he realizes that he’d slept for two hours. Not only is he late, he is extremely late.
“Sorry,” Dick says, rushing to grab his wallet and keys. “I slept in. I’ll be there in ten.”
Dick is sure Peter doesn’t believe him, but he’ll deal with it when he gets to the office.
Fifteen minutes later, he steps off the elevator on the twenty-first floor. He pushes through the glass doors and sits down at his desk, quickly pulling out the file he’d been working on yesterday so he can put the finishing touches on it and give it to Peter. Maybe it will soften the blow. Peter can’t be that mad after he realizes that, late or not, he still did his job. Right?
A condition of his contract with the FBI is that he’s supposed to be at the office every weekday at seven. If he’s late, he better have a good excuse. The problem is, he doesn’t. Sleep deprivation isn’t helpful when trying to come up with lies to cover up his vigilantism, and sleeping in isn’t a very good excuse on its own. Dick will have to come up with a story for why he slept in, and even then he’s likely to be met with a side eye from Peter for a while.
Dick signs the file and closes it. He stands, ignoring the way his legs and arms twinge, and heads for Peter’s office.
Then, he stops.
He hadn’t noticed all the eyes on him when he walked in. He’d been too focused on getting inside and getting to work before he could catch any more flack, but now he notices, and he’s a little unnerved.
Every agent in the office is staring at him. Jones is sitting at his desk, face blank, but eyes trained on Dick’s chest. Diana is standing at the top of the stairs, watching him with a look that can only be described as pure bewilderment. The other agents have stopped what they were doing to gawk at him, expressions ranging from confusion to irritation to amusement.
Whatever has them acting so strange escapes Dick. They’re all looking at him like he has grown a second head, and he doesn’t have the slightest clue why.
Dick scans the room. When no one bothers to explain or clue him in, he raises an eyebrow. “What?”
Silence. No one moves, as if the slightest disturbance would shatter reality. Dick is tired, and the agents’ staring is not something he can calmly deal with right now.
Cutting through the heavy silence is a loud, drawn out squeak. Dick turns around and looks up, relieved to see Peter exiting his office, most likely to see why the office has ground to a standstill. Immediately, Peter’s eyes zero in on Dick. He sighs.
“Neal, now is not the time. I hope you brought a change of clothes with you, because we don’t have time to make a detour.” Peter doesn’t spare a second glance as he breezes by Dick.
Dick has a dawning feeling of horror. Slowly, he glances down, and what he finds causes his heart to stop.
There, on his chest in broad daylight, in the middle of the FBI’s New York field office, with nearly two dozen agents staring at it, is a bright blue bird.
Oh, god
.