Work Text:
Shooty: Send dick pic.
Dick looks at his phone, the FBI issued one, and glances around the office. It’s past 7pm, and only Peter’s team are still in the office. Diana’s in with Peter, so only Neal and Jones are out in the bullpen.
There’s no one to see the inappropriate workplace text. That’s good.
Jason probably meant to text Roy, or someone else entirely, and isn’t asking for a pick of Dick’s actual dick. But he did ask for a dick pic, and Dick likes to be obliging to his siblings.
Dick plucks his hat from where it’s propped on Socrates’s statuesque head and angles it carefully back from the crown of his head to make sure the brim would distort the background enough to not be recognisably as the FBI offices.
One photo later, middle finger raised as Jason deserves.
One Dick pic.
Dick stops himself before he presses send, then snorts with laughter.
He can do better.
What are little brothers for if not to make them regret their life choices when not being careful when soliciting dick pics?
Socrates would work, if he can play with perspective enough, given the limited range of his own arm.
No. He probably needs an accomplice. Or a more versatile phone camera than the FBI issued one. He could wait to enlist Mozzie, but Jones is usually up for a tiny level of structured whimsey.
“Jones?”
“Yeah, Neal?”
“Can you take a pic for me?”
Dick is already ruffling his hair into sex tufts, and undoing a few buttons on his shirt, and pulling his tie loose.
“Is Peter going to make me regret it?”
“Nope. Peter’s never going to even know.”
“That is not the reassuring statement you intended it to be.”
“Okay, Peter won’t care, if he finds out.”
Dick considers the set up carefully. He’s pretty good at distances and ratios, always has been. If he stands on the second step, and he puts Socrates on the left corner of Andrea’s desk, with his jacket bunched up right, and if Jones takes the pic from his desk, at about hip height…well, it should work.
“What’s this for, Neal?”
“My brother asked for a dick pic.”
“Your brother—?” Jones asks, in that soft, understated way he does sometimes. Dick remembers that Neal Caffrey is not meant to have any siblings, but he doesn’t really care. Let the Caffrey mystery grow.
“I think you’re focusing on the wrong part of that sentence, Jones.”
“Your brother asked for a dick pic.”
“Much better emphasis.”
“Wrong number text, I hope?”
“Probably,” Dick says, crouching down as he settles Socrates in the right location to make sure he’s lined up right. “But also, he’s an asshole.”
“So, he gets a pic of you being a dick to him.”
“Yeap.”
“Why Socrates?” Jones asks. “Philosophy doesn’t really seem like it’s your thing, you know.”
“Because a bust of Houdini would make Peter’s blood pressure spike.“
Jones laughs.
Dick sets up Socrates on the edge of Anthea’s desk, and arranges his jacket over her chair for a body.
“Houdini would work better,” Jones says, as he lets Dick manoeuvre him into the right location for the perspective shot to work.
“If you find a bust of him, let me know.”
“So you can carve out his middle to hide handcuff keys?”
“I’d think that comes standard.”
“Not that you need the keys.”
“Keys are for kids under four. Everyone else can use a paperclip.”
Jones laughs.
Dick gets into position, pulls out his shirt tails from his trousers and lets the belt hang open.
“Woah. Don’t actually get your dick out, Neal!”
“Your virtue is safe, Jones. It’s all an illusion.”
“Uh huh.”
“Verisimilitude,” Dick says, wiggling a little so his pants hang low.
Dick settles himself on the second stair leading up towards Peter’s office, one hand on the handrail. This will be easy. He just hopes Peter doesn’t come out in the next thirty seconds.
“Okay. Are you ready, Jones?” Dick asks, rising up on his tip toes.
“Sure.”
Dick lifts himself with the stable arm, and wraps his left leg around the imaginary shoulders of Socrates. He holds himself steady and gives Jones a few different sultry looks.
Looking down at the Socrates giving him head.
Looking straight at the camera with a come-hither look.
Arching his back in the throws of pleasure, while throwing his hat towards Jones, who ducks out of the way.
Jones dutifully clicks, though he’s laughing.
“One more! Neal, can you grab his hair?”
Dick smirks in agreement, holding his back arched, hand outstretched so it could be resting on Socrate’s cheek. He looks straight at the camera lens, and licks his lips.
“And that’s a wrap. I think I got some good ones,” Jones says as he hands the phone back.
“Thanks, Jones.”
Dick flips through the photos. They are pretty good. He definitely looks like he’s getting enthusiastic head from a statue.
“How are you that bendy?” Jones says, as Dick considers one of the ones with his back twisting back to thrust his crotch forward. The alignment of that one isn’t perfect, though. “And good at balancing?”
“Practice,” Dick says. “I’ve got all my weight over this point, see,” he says, pointing at the centre of gravity he was maintaining behind his right knee. “You should see Catwoman. Or me in something more formfitting. Then you can really appreciate the balance.”
“You get into bendiness competitions with Catwoman?“ Jones asks.
“Hmm, yes. Been doing it for years, and I haven’t lost yet.”
“Sexy bendy competitions?”
“Ew. No. She’s like my step-mum.”
Jones gives Dick a long look, and Dick can see him popping that away into his mental Caffrey Mysteries file.
“That one,” Jones says.
Dick considers it. The perspective is just right. His left leg looks like it’s balanced over Socrate’s desk-chair-in-jacket shoulder. Hat in hand, like he’s just pulled it from Socrate’s head. He’s looking straight at the camera, with fuck me eyes and a barely opened mouth, just a hint of tongue showing.
“Yeap. That’s good.”
Dick sends it on its way to Jason, because Jason is an arsehole and probably deserves it if he asks for dick pics from whoever his lover is so abruptly. Unless this is just how Jason and Roy communicate, and it isn’t someone extra they’ve brought in recently.
“Thanks, Jones.” Dick says,
“Remind me not to get in a prank war with you, Neal.”
“I’ve got experience.”
“Your brother?”
“Oh yeah,” Dick says.
His phone pings again.
Shooty: Oh, fuck you, Dickhead.
Swingy: Busy tonight. Try again later.
Jason just doesn’t appreciate Dick. Dick takes a moment to change his contact info to something suitably infuriating if Jason ever finds out.
Jane Austen’s #1 Fan: I’ve got my own redhead now. That statue of yours needs a wig for believability.
WC + DC + WC
It’s not until a few days later that Dick realises he might be out of the loop about something.
That’s not unusual. He’s trapped in New York, for one thing, so the daily happenings of Gotham aren’t really important, so he only gets the highlights. And he’s monitored by the FBI for another, so some circumspection is required when bitching about other vigilantes and rogues, and other such things that the FBI would enjoy having more details about.
But there’s enough references in the family group chat for him to—notice the gap.
Sometimes Steph and Jason are shit-talking each other, and then it goes silent without either having proclaimed their victory, as if they moved out of the group chat to rip each other to shreds in private.
Which…doesn’t seem right. Neither of them like winning in private. They much prefer the audience, and Tim actually has some sort of points-scoring algorithm he uses to keep track.
Sometimes the bottom of his screen says …Sleepy is typing, or …Silent is typing, or even …Sparkly is typing, and Steph has no self control at not finishing up a text, no matter how inadvisable it is to send, but then the typer disappears.
Which doesn’t mean much of anything, if it wasn’t that all of his siblings have been doing it lately. Even Damian, who is not the type of boy to cut himself off when he wants to say something to the group.
It’s not that Dick is sad and wants his family to entertain him with random nonsense.
It’s that sometimes he’s a bit lonely, and Neal’s clothes aren’t as comfortable as his own, and he just wants his family to entertain him with random nonsense so he doesn’t think they’ve forgotten him since he’s been stuck in NYC.
WC + DC + WC
“Why so glum, mon frère?”
Dick looks up from his glass of wine, which Mozzie has just helpfully refilled for the fourth time.
“I—I’m being kept out of the loop on something.”
“We shouldn’t expect anything else of the Suits.”
“No—” Dick stops himself from saying it’s the capes that are keeping him on a leash, at a distance. “Not Peter and the team.”
“Hmm,” Mozzie says, tilting his glass forward in welcome.
“My—siblings.”
“The ones you’ve never introduced me to.”
“You’ve met some of them.”
“When? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“They were checking you out. Vetting you in their own ways.”
“Oh, okay then,” Mozzie says, sniffing in approval. “I suppose if I did not detect them at the time they are also of acceptable quality to—be acceptable. To you. As siblings. When I’m not around.“
“I think something might be going on at home which they don’t want to tell me about.“ Dick rattles his leg with the anklet, and Mozzie sighs his agreement.
“Something in Gotham—”
“Probably. Or something within the family that would need me there in person, I guess, to be useful.”
“I’m not going to Gotham for less than two million.”
“When I need a Gothamite, I have them. They just aren’t talking to me.”
“Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.”
“Who’s that?”
“Terry Pratchett.”
“You’ll like J, when you meet him. He used to swear at cops in Shakespearean insults when he was a street kid.”
“Well,“ Mozzie cracks his knuckles, “let’s see what your deceitful siblings are getting up to.”
Mozzie waves his wine glass for a moment, before setting it down on the table.
“Well, come on, don’t you have that spare laptop I gave you hidden here somewhere?”
Dick points upwards, at a seemingly flush meeting of wall to ceiling, twelve foot up, to the right of the chimney stack.
“Ah, yes. I wonder what Byron used that one for. How do you even get at it?”
“I think he kept longterm blackmail in there. Or his porn collection. I wasn’t quite sure, from the photos I found.”
“Well, we’ll need a ladder, and a few hours if I’m the one climbing it, because I need a lot less wine in my blood to get up there.”
“Don’t be silly, Moz.”
“Oh good. This is why I keep you around, mon frère, for climbing things when drunk.”
“I’m barely tipsy. You need to give me the good drugs to even try to make me fall.”
Dick looks down, checking his outfit. His pyjama pants are loose enough. No socks. Sometimes tipsy is enough to not realise that his range of motion was greater than the seams of his trousers, so he’s learnt to check.
Dick launches himself from a standing start at the wall.
He starts climbing up the rough painted brick of the chimney, and when it starts to narrow he gets his toes on the top lip of the door surround into the dressing room by doing most of a split. It’s easier once he’s above the door. He’s got almost an inch to perch on, and that’s plenty for his bare toes. He gets to the far right off the door surround, and then he can reach the cubby while standing on his toes and stretching to the right.
“Neal!”
“Yeah Moz?” Dick says, looking down.
“Couldn’t you wait for me to find a ladder?”
“Nope. Can you throw me up that paint knife?”
“I’m not throwing a knife at my best friend while he dangles from the ceiling.”
“I’m not dangling. And it’s not a real knife.”
“That’s worse. You’re just—Sitting there. In the air. What are you even holding onto?“
“You should see what I can do on an olympic free climb wall.”
Mozzie gulps compulsively at his wine.
“Just throw me the damn paint knife, Moz.”
“No, I will not murder you like a—like pinning a fly to a damn wall.”
“Urgh,” Dick says, then pushes himself off the wall, flipping three times before landing on his feet.
He grabs the paint knife, wipes the turpentine off, sticks it in his teeth, then climbs back up the wall, even quicker now that he knows where the best holds are on the chimney stack.
“Normal people can’t do that, Neal. Are you a cryptid with sticky pads on your fingers?”
“It’s really not that hard,” he says, through the knife in his teeth.
Dick looks down, to see Mozzie with his phone camera focused on Dick.
“Huh?” He says, pulling the knife from his teeth. “Why are you filming me?”
“I want proof that I didn’t do anything when the Suit asks me how you died. And June; I don’t want to know what she’d do to me if I got you killed.”
“Worry about my siblings if you get me killed.”
“Well, now I will. It’s not an easy job worrying about you, mon frère. You’re crazy and climb up walls and then flip off walls, and being a criminal mastermind does not come with good medical insurance.”
Dick holds himself on the 3/4 inch wide door lintel, and it’s easy enough to wedge the edge of the paint knife into the seam he knows is there, and lever the gap open.
“Hmm? Well, I’m technically on the federal prison medical care system.”
“I meant for me.“
Dick holds the cubby open with the palette knife, and pulls his (third) secret laptop from it’s location, making sure to not disrupt the extra IDs.
“Coming down,” Dick says.
He holds the laptop against his chest because Mozzie looks kind of stressed, and only flips twice on the dismount. There. That was practically normal. Mozzie can’t possibly bitch about that.
Dick hands over the laptop, and Mozzie lets the pause before he takes it express his displeasure.
“Well, let’s see what secrets your siblings are keeping from you, mon frère.” Mozzie says, booting the laptop up.
Dick refills Mozzie’s wine glass, and picks an excellent bottle to open next as apology.
Dick enjoys watching Mozzie work, sipping his wine. Mozzie’s a lot more scattered than Tim or Babs, but he gets good results.
“Hmm…Okay,” Mozzie says, “I think I’ve got it.”
“Yes?”
“You’re right. There’s a family group chat you’re not part of.”
“Oh,” Dick says. Knowing he was right doesn’t make this feel any better than the feeling of exclusion when he just suspected they had a second group behind the first. Just because he can’t drop everything and come to Gotham with no notice doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to know what’s going on.
Maybe he’s drunker than he thought.
Did he encourage Mozzie to hack into vigilante comms to see if his siblings still love him?
Oh, gods, Tim is going to kill him if he outed them all because he was lonely. Jason is going to laugh so hard.
But it’s Mozzie who starts laughing. Not his usual, ‘I’m an clever genius, watch me chortle at your misfortune’ laugh. No. His embarrassing, enthusiastic laugh, with body and soul.
“What? What is it?”
Mozzie spins the computer so Dick can see the screen.
“It’s about you!” Mozzie laughs. “It’s a chat group to roast you!”
“But I’m the good brother. Jay is a recovering mass murderer. Baby Bird is a highly caffeinated gremlin who might have experimented with personal cloning to get things done. Little D cuddles his katanas when he’s sleeping; it’s kind of cute, actually. And Flashbang is—actually, Daisy Duke is almost normal in comparison to the rest of us. But how do I get elevated to having a family chat just to complain about me?”
“Only man can be absurd, for only man can be dignified.”
“I am the nice one, Mozzie.”
“They’ve called it Dick Pics.”
“Oh,” Dick says, with dawning comprehension.
“Ooooh.” Mozzie says.
On the screen is a picture of Dick from a few months ago, sent by Damian.
In it Dick is being perfectly normal, and not deserving of being roasted, thanks very much, siblings.
Dick in the photo was very normally eating cereal for breakfast in the Manor kitchen. Judging by the afternoon light coming through the kitchen windows, at about 3pm, but that’s normal breakfast time for a vigilante. Maybe it was a little creative that he was using his feet to get the spoon to his mouth, but his arms were busy holding himself from a beam so he could do some pull ups at the same time.
“You’re using your feet to eat cereal.”
“I was multitasking!“
The chat following it is his siblings grading it. The consensus seems to be an average of B-, which Tim has collated into a +3 score for Damian.
Followed by a ranking chart. Jason appears to be winning.
The next photo was sent by Jason, and it’s from two years ago when he’d been benched for a shoulder injury. It was the middle of summer, so Dick had been wearing one of his sundresses, because a boy likes to breathe sometimes. It’s only through careful angles that Dick isn’t flashing the camera. He was lying on his back on the grass near the manor, holding a book over his head with his feet, and Jason had caught him in the middle of turning a page with his toes.
Mozzie looks over at Dick, then looks down at his bare feet.
“It’s a comfortable way to read. I wasn’t meant to be using my shoulder.”
“That only got a C. No points for the dress,” Mozzie summarises.
“I like dresses.”
“What were you even doing for this one?”
Dick in the photo is dressed in jeans and a sloppy hoodie, balanced on a roof beam on one hand, legs extended above him, while he keeps a camera trained on the warehouse floor below him.
“Staking out some gunrunners, I think? They were having a long meeting, so I got bored.”
“B+. Apparently you got bonus recklessness points for being in civvies.”
Mozzie scrolls up further.
“You’re asleep in a chandelier! How do you even do that?”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Of course not, you were asleep.“
“I’d probably had a long week.”
“I wonder what your climbing up a flat bit of wall to get at ceiling hidy-holes would get me?”
“Mozzie, no,” Dick says.
“Neal, yes. This is payment for the heart attacks you almost give me all the damn time. There are other people who appreciate how stressful it is to have you in their life, with your bendiness and your inappropriate use of ceiling beams.”
He presses upload on the video.
It pauses, a buffering wheel stuttering.
Then the screen goes black, except for some melodramatic and old school green text.
Overlord, All Seeing: Who are you?
Mozzie shakes out his fingers, like he’s preparing for battle.
You may call me Mozzie. I’m minding Neal in New York. I would appreciate any tips to keep him out of trouble.
The next line he types, his name has appeared.
Mozzie: Exhibit A. ^
“Neal?” Mozzie says.
Dick leans down next to Mozzie, and risks a rare touch to his shoulder. Mozzie only likes very occasional touch, even from Dick.
“O’s a little paranoid. We would have only had a minute or two before she noticed your intrusion anyway.”
“She’s that good?” Mozzie asks.
“Please don’t get a crush on her. She’s my ex.”
“I thought this was your sibling group?“
“Well—she is now? Sort of. She never let herself get adopted, but she still counts.”
Mozzie’s cellphone starts ringing.
Not the one that the video was filmed on. Or the other one which is his current phone number that Neal has. The third phone.
Mozzie scrambles to turn up the left leg of his trousers, to get at the interior pocket that contains his tertiary burner.
“She’s very good,” Mozzie says appreciatively.
Mozzie answers it on speakerphone.
“O, I presume?” Mozzie says, trying his best to sound relaxed.
“Hello, Mozzie.” O’s using a voice distorter, probably in an effort to be deep and menacing, but Dick suspects she’s really just feeding Mozzie’s burgeoning intellectual crush on an technological and paranoid mind.
Huh, Dick thinks, O is kind of perfect for Mozzie. Someone he can worship from afar, who deserves all his adoration (and then some).
“Hi, O. Sorry,” Dick says. “We’re a little drunk. I was worried you guys were keeping something important from me.”
“And what does your blood-sucking mosquito friend know?“
“Not much. He knows Neal, and that I’ve got a bunch of annoying siblings who apparently get points from taking compromising photos of me.”
“Ridiculous photos. That’s why they’re Dick pics.”
“Rude, O.”
“If I wanted to compromise you I’ve got some little-d dick pics you sent me.”
“Does it really count as a dick pic if they are aesthetic nudes?”
“I can see your dick, and we were dating at the time. They’re dick pics.“
“But I didn’t—”
“Quiet, N. We’re chatting about your buzzy little friend.”
“O, rest assured I have no ill-intentions towards Neal.”
“Give me a moment,” O says.
There’s a tinny loop of sound. It stops. Starts again.
“Mon frère?” O asks. “On the video you uploaded—nice angle on that one, by the way, I’d give you a B for your first go—you called N ‘mon frère’.”
“Ah—yes. Well, I know that Neal has a lot of siblings, and you must all love him, but I—I don’t—I don’t have anyone else. But he’s my brother, even if I’m not his.”
“Hmm,” O makes an affirming noise, which sounds a little weird through her threatening voice distortion software.
“N is rather enthusiastic at adoption on his own merits. He picked it up from B.”
“Do I get the cheat sheet of who is which letter?”
“Not yet, Mozzie,” says O.
“Can I get a cheat sheet of the scoring system?” Dick asks.
“Location, creativity, lack-of-relationship-to-normal-humans, recklessness.”
“You score me on recklessness?”
“Of course.”
“So, how many points did I get for the Socrates blowjob? Did J pass that on?“
“That got an F. If you got to compete, you’d be on minus four.”
“Negative points? Why? Is it because it wasn’t a redhead? Because J is an asshole, and I can find a red wig.”
“Posed shots aren’t acceptable. That’s why you weren’t included in the competition. You’d ruin the stats.”
“This is why Steph visited me last week, isn’t it?”
“She was lagging behind. Managed a video of you doing one-handed cartwheels across the roof terrace without spilling your orange juice. B+. Four points for Steph.”
“I mean, that’s not too hard. The centrifugal force mostly keeps it in the glass anyway, so you only really have to be careful with orientation as you’re stopping, and if you can’t keep up the flow.”
“You cartwheeled up and overtop the breakfast table, missing the dishes. She got an extra point for that.”
“Your lovely O has a good point, Neal. Lack-of-relationship-to-normal-human-ness does apply to your breakfast habits.”
“N. Your little friend has covered their online tracks quite thoroughly. Anything I need to know which I might not find?”
“You’re attempting to hack me, O?” Mozzie says, sounding flustered.
“Of course. Turnabout and all that.”
“Mozzie’s non-violent, strictly white collar. He picks big fish targets, never the small fry. Loyal, and probably for life; he donates to the orphanage he grew up in, but anonymously. I’d say he fluctuates between chaotic neutral and chaotic good.”
“Neal! I am not chaotic good.”
“You have a free spirit and a good heart, Mozzie. I’d be proud to call you my brother.”
“Oh. Mon frère”
“For what it’s worth,” O interrupts, “I think he’s safe to tell. We worry about you in NYC.”
“Are you going to run that by the bats?”
“Well, Neal and N don’t have to be D. But I’ll leave that up to you.”
“O?” Dick asks.
“Keep an eye on N for us, buzzy little mosquito. Send us evidence of his continued recklessness, and ability to survive it.”
“Of course, O.”
“N’s trying to fix a lot of things by himself right now, and non of us are great back up for what he needs to do.”
“He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.”
“Hmm. Yes. He’s a bit of an overachiever when it comes to twisting himself to fit what other people need from him.”
“He’s been tangling himself into knots for the Suit, so I’ll do my best.”
“He’s rather bendy, as you’ve noticed. Welcome to the family, demi-frère.”
Then O clicks off, because she likes having the last word, and Dick watches the family chat (named Dick pics) load on Mozzie’s laptop.
Dick’s family phone pings as well, and he now has access to the Dick Pics chat.
Overlord, All Seeing: Dick was feeling lonely, since we were talking about him behind his back. He’s here now.
Overlord, All Seeing: We’ve got Mozzie too. He’s our new brother. Be nice. He’ll be bringing us NY Dick pics.
O loaded Mozzie’s video of Dick climbing the wall with a knife between his teeth.
Only a moment later the first replies came in.
Overlord, All Seeing: B+, for the added tension of the videographer’s fear.
Jane Austen’s #1 Fan: B-, for the lacklustre dismount. Was that only a double somersault? Is he ill?
“That one likes Austen?” Mozzie asks, reading over Dick’s shoulder.
“He hates Austen; he wants to bitchslap all the heroines. He prefers Shakespeare, and took Titus Andronicus a bit seriously for a while. You can call him J.”
Swingy: I was trying to not freak out Mozzie.
Jane Austen’s #1 Fan: If he’s our brother now, he’s got to get used to your bendy, physics-defying fuckery.
Sleepy: C. That ceiling isn’t high enough for anything above C.
“Neal,” Mozzie says, slowly and carefully. Dick glances at the still-open cubbyhole. Well, Tim is right, it isn’t very high.
Swingy: Well, it’s the ceiling that I’ve got, so I can’t be penalised for not having a higher ceiling.
Jane Austen’s #1 Fan: Do you even have proper room for a sleep chandelier in your Caffrey apartment? Where do you nap?
“Neal!” Mozzie repeats, with a hint of panic in his voice.
He’s stopped at one of the photos, this one sent by Damian. Graded as A-, apparently. Dick’s caught in midair, hanging a few meters out over the edge of a rooftop in Gotham. There’s a decent angle on it, too. He’s using a grapple on a storm drain as a pivot, and the face of one of Two-Face’s goons as a launch to get him around to the third and fourth goons over to the right. The midair splits was just because he was having fun. It must be from Damian’s suit-cam. It’s a nice photo, and Damian was pretty great that night, too.
“Oh, I like that one.”
“Why are there photos of Nightwing in a family chat devoted to roasting you for being ridiculous?“
“Oh,” Dick says.
“You’re Nightwing?”
“…Yes.”
“My best friend in all the world, my brother, has kept his vigilante past from me.”
“Technically, still present. I haven’t been able to patrol very often since I’ve been on anklet, so sometimes Red Robin puts on my suit to pretend I’m still around in Bludhaven or Gotham.”
“So your family chat is the vigilantes of Gotham? And whoever O is invited me to join.”
“Uh, yes.”
Mozzie breathes out, looking out the window at the rooftops of Manhattan.
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
“It’s not really a big deal.“
“Well, at least I know you’re cheating,“ Mozzie says with satisfaction, looking back at Dick.
“Cheating? At what?”
“At life. At being a con. With the climbing of walls, and the hanging off things by your toes, and disappearing when we’re in the middle of a con. This explains so much. Bloody metas.”
“I’m not a meta.”
“You don’t need to lie to me, Neal, it’s fine. I’m hardly going to tell the Suit. Or the—do you have any specific nemeses I need to look out for? I hadn’t thought it necessary to keep up with Gotham types because I like my head where it is, thanks, so I never planned to go back, and I don’t want to fight Catwoman for treasure.”
“Catwoman’s probably wouldn’t fight you.”
“Oh, god, is she in the chat too?”
“I don’t think so. O kept the parentals out of it, I’m pretty sure.”
“Hmm,” Mozzie says, considering. “What are your meta powers? There’s that super-flexible thing you do, where you have no bones. And the disappearing. Do you have some sort of grip pads on your hands and feet?”
“I’m still not a meta, Moz.“
“Of course you are.”
“I’m really not. I’m just a regular human who grew up in a circus and keeps up his flexibility exercises.”
“I don’t even get to know about your real childhood? Even though I know you’re Nightwing? Oh. That’s okay. I guess I still have to earn that.”
“Moz, I didn’t mean—” Dick says, wondering how to convince someone as paranoid as Mozzie that he actually grew up in a circus when that sounds like such a fake out. Well, he’ll save that problem for later.
“I was the first Robin,” Dick says, as a compromise. “That’s how I grew up.“
“Ah, yes, that makes sense. How did Batman pick you? Does he find metas who aren’t been treated right, and train them as Robin?”
“None of us are metas. No metas in Gotham. Batman’s—well, he used to be pretty strict about that, but mostly because he hated when the Flash crashed through. Old Flash, not my Flash.”
“Your Flash?”
“Uh—the red-head you saw me…naked cuddling with, when you came in without knocking?”
“Who disappeared so fast when I turned my back you didn’t even need to convince me I was seeing things.”
“Yeah. That Flash. He’s mine.”
“I’m going to regret finding out about your double-life, aren’t I?”
Dick shrugs. It seems likely, but most of the folk he knows who also know about anyone’s double-life are already thoroughly involved.
“Maybe there’s a help group for non-vigilantes who are in the know? I’ll ask Iris.“
“A meta support class stitch and bitch group?”
“I’m not a meta.”
Mozzie raises his eyebrows in accusation.
“Occam’s razor. You can do things which normal humans can’t. Metahumans exist. Metahumans can do things which are beyond normal human limits. Therefore you are a metahuman.”
“I would know if I were meta.“
“Perhaps.”
“None of us bats are metas. Except Signal.”
“Perhaps none of you believe you are metas. That’s quite a different situation.”
“You’re not running a long con on my siblings to make them believe they’re metas.“
“No, of course not. That would be rude. I’ll observe. Empirical evidence is the best evidence. How old is Batman?“
“I’m not telling you that.”
“Hmm, so he is the same person that began as Batman?”
“Mostly. There was a little bit when I filled in for—What are you doing?” Dick asks, watching Mozzie flicking through the photo roll on his camera.
“Well, it’s not like I store many photos in the cloud, but I can make a good start on this dick pic competition.“
“Oh no.”
Mozzie looked up at Dick, his hands paused. “I don’t have to. I know that O said I was—she gave me access, but she didn’t actually ask you.”
“My siblings do that. We’re allowed to intervene if it’s for someone’s own good.“
“So why’s is the chat called dick pics? Do you know.”
“Uh. That’s my name. Dick.”
“Okay, you don’t have to tell me yet. I know that being honest all at once is a difficult prospect, but you can trust me. I love you, mon frère. I won’t betray you.”
“Oh, mon frère Mozzie. Just because our sort-of-Dad picked them doesn’t mean I don’t pick you. As well as them. I don’t have too many siblings yet.”
WC + DC + WC
“Did you ever find out who your brother was actually asking for a dick pic?” Jones asks a few days later, when Peter is distracted with Hughes.
“Oh, he was asking for pics of me.”
“—what? Your brother wanted pics of your dick?”
“Nah. He didn’t want pics of my actual dick. He wanted pics of me being a dick. He just—It’s my siblings. They apparently have a competition where they take pics of me doing stupid shit and grade it.”
“Like that time you jumped from the sixth story balcony onto the van when it was already moving.”
“Yeah. Perfectly normal things like that.”
“They can have my number if they want more dirt on you. I can specialise in impulsive things you do in front of federal agents.”
“Mozzie’s already joined them. And the shit I do in front of the feds is pretty boring, honestly. You wouldn’t get a high score.”
WC + DC + WC
It’s a long and boring night in the van, and Dick is welcoming all distractions, but the Dick Pic group is arguing over whether a particular beam was narrow enough to qualify as properly reckless.
“Gods damnit,” Dick says, as his phone pings again.
“You’re very popular tonight, Neal.” Peter says.
The phone pings four times in succession.
“Are we keeping you from anything important?“
“Nope. Nothing important. It’s just my brother sending Dick pics.”
“Dick pics? Neal!” Peter says, seemingly on instinct.
“Your brother is sending you dick pics?” Diana says
“Hmm,” Dick says, as he opens the 7 notifications.
Jones has to brace himself on the video equipment he’s laughing so hard.
That night Mozzie passes on the video Jones filmed in the van:
Dick, obviously bored, lying flat on his belly across the middle of the van’s floor, while they listen to the mark and his girlfriend over the comms. He’s got his feet bent over his head, and he’s using his socked feet as sock puppets acting out the dramatic, tele-novella worthy breakup scene.