The Boys in Blue
Story 8: Who was that Flamingo I Saw With you?
Probation. That's what happened when police officers got involved in shoot-outs and high-speed chases. Dick and Jason had become regular desk-jockeys thanks to that little incident with 'Pusey Cat' last week; and were basically just filling out reports and paperwork while a board of investigators cleared them for active duty again. Detective Burns was, of course, taking his own sweet time on the investigation, leaving the brothers plenty of opportunity to plot against him.
Big mistake.
If Burns had even just a few more brain cells than he did, he might have realized that fact sooner rather than later. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the boys had it in for him. But Burns never did learn from past mistakes. Which is why he didn't think anything of it when he passed two bright pink lawn flamingos parked behind Dick's desk on his way to the bathroom.
….
Jason Todd leaned casually against the back wall of the police station, a cigarette held elegantly between his fingers. His tie hung loose around his neck and his sleeves were rolled up almost to his elbows. One ankle resting on the other, head tipped back against the brick, eyes falling lazily skyward, Jason was the picture of nonchalance. And yet…
"Burns just went to drain the dragon. Locked him in," said Dick.
Jason tapped the communicator in his right ear with two fingers and spoke. "On my way."
He walked briskly back to Dick's new car—a bright blue Audi TT—and popped the trunk. He hefted a large roll of fake grass out of the back and flopped it over his shoulder. The damned thing must have weighed 200 pounds at least, and the cheap plastic grass scraped his cheek, but Jason was up to the challenge. He walked back to the station through the back door. No one said anything.
Well, mostly.
"Well, well, well, what have we here?" said a voice to his left. Jason couldn't see the speaker past the roll of grass on his shoulder, but he knew Chief Redhorn's voice when he heard it. Well shit.
"Would you believe, I'm just doing some spring cleaning?" Jason tried.
"In November?" asked Redhorn. Amused. Suspicious. Conspiratorial.
Jason shrugged his free shoulder. "Better late than never."
"Whatever it is you're planning to do to Burns, do it fast," said the Chief, "I can't leave my senior detective locked in the bathroom all day."
"Now would we do that?" said Dick, now at his desk a few feet away, a lawn flamingo slung over each shoulder. He was smiling that smile which should have been innocent but wasn't.
Jason hadn't realized what a devious side Dick had until he came back from the dead. He'd wished he'd known back when he was Robin—a thought he always tried to squish whenever it came up—but he was getting to rather like things the way they were now, and so didn't dwell on it. Well, he tried not to anyways. Curiosity was a bitch from hell.
Redhorn sighed. "You've got 5 minutes."
"Which is four more than we need," said Jason, breezing past his superior.
The two so-called police officers broke into Detective Burn's office. He'd at least had the presence of mind to lock the door. It was organized. Clean. Uncluttered. It made their job easier. Against the back wall, was a long black desk; a cheap one, with a computer monitor, a keyboard, a small stack of ring binders, and a mug of tea. There was a trash-bin in the corner behind the desk, a faded and stained red spinney-chair, a tallass filing cabinet with a lamp, and set of random plastic draws beside it.
Jason set the roll of grass down in the open corner of the room and began rolling it out over the carpet. When he got to the fling cabinet, Dick lifted it just enough for him to get the grass under it. Then, he rolled out another strip. And so on and so forth, until the entire office had been turned into a display yard one might see at Home Depot. Jason stabbed the lawn flamingos into place beside the window while Dick jogged back to the car for the inflatable kiddie-pool.
"Two minutes!" Redhorn warned them from outside the office.
Dick came back a minute later with the pool and pulled the self-inflate tab they'd worked out the night before. Jason dumped 50 gallons of water into the pool from the dispenser out front and made his escape just as Redhorn let Burns out of the bathroom.
The office was nothing short of stunning. And Jason would be lying if he said he wasn't proud of their interior decorating skills. The entire floor of the office was now covered in fake grass, as bright a green as the real thing. It clashed splendidly with the murky yellow paint on the walls and the rust-red trim of the whiteboard behind the desk. The tacky law flamingos really completed the look, even if the one flamingo refused to stand up straight. But the real masterpiece, the coups de grace if you will, was the Dora the Explorer kiddie pool just chillin' in the middle of the floor. Jason was really proud that they'd pulled it all off in under five minutes. That had to be a record.
But the time a stony faced and reasonably suspicious Detective Burns walked past Dick's desk in the main office, both boys appeared hard at work. When Burns reached the door of his office, Jason risked a look at his brother through the transparent divider that separated their workstations. Dick didn't risk a loot. And if Jason didn't know better, he'd swear the guy was innocent. Dick was well…a dick…a lot of the time. And that suited Jason just fine these days. It kept life interesting. If a little ridiculous.
Sometimes, Jason wondered if some of Dick's more elaborate pranks weren't just a way to keep him out of real trouble. His brother tended to insist he couldn't pull them off without help—like the one they just pulled—but the fact was, he most certainly could. Not that Jason minded too much. He found Dick's childish pranks rather amusing, and frankly found himself more invested in them than he cared to admit. Which really just made him wonder all the more, in spite of his best efforts to the contrary.
What would I be doing if I wasn't here making Burns's life hell? Jason didn't know. But perhaps it didn't matter in the long run. Not if he was enjoying life the way it was.
"What the fucking hell!" screamed Burns just before they heard a splash and a thud.
Everyone in the precinct came running over, crowding the doorway. Being taller than average, Jason was just able to see over the heads of his colleagues from behind. Burns was sprawled belly-down in the kiddie, completely soaked from the mid-thigh up. When he turned to look back at everyone over his shoulder, his face was murderous. Perfect.
"Grayson! Todd!" he screamed.
"Yes, detective," said Dick moving past the others to get a front-row view of his masterpiece, "is there…goodness gracious! You're all wet!"
"Of course I'm all wet, you moron!" screamed Burns.
Dick reached out to help him back to his feet. "Look, I know you've been working really hard lately…"
"How dare you!" Burns shoved Dick aside as hard as he could. Unfortunately, Dick was more solid than he looked, and Burns only ended up losing his own balance in the process. Dick grinned down at the man, but made no further attempt to help him up.
That's when Chief Redhorn appeared in the doorway. "I love what you've done with the place detective," he said, "but don't you think your lawn is a little over-due for a trim?"
That seemed to be the final straw. Burns leaped to his feet and glared at the police chief with murderous ire. He was seething, or close to it. And that was enough to satisfy all of Jason's previously murderous thoughts about the man. Funny how that worked. Pulling a prank on the man who was tormenting his civilian identity was almost more satisfying than putting a bullet through his foot. Weird.
"Those two," Burns pointed first at Dick and then at Jason, "are…either you will report them, or I will…"
"Technically, we didn't do anything illegal," Jason pointed out.
"There isn't even anything in the handbook about redecorating the precinct offices," Dick added.
A blood vessel bulged in Burns's temple. "Get out of here he shouted! Out! Go home. I can't work with these two miscreants."
Redhorn merely sighed. "Can't do that. We need the shift covered. We're understaffed as it is. You know that."
"And yet they have time to turn my office into a fucking Home Depot display!" Burns shouted.
The police chief merely sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. And in the end, he did nothing. Apparently, he was not going to act like the precinct dad and deal with all their petty squabbles. Dick and Jason went back to work, as did burns. A few of the other officers—Amy included—made jokes about lending Burns a lawnmower, but for the most part the day went on as always.
….
Later:
Dick was hanging by his knees from a pipe-line near the ceiling of a storage house on the wharf. The blood was starting to rush to his head just a little and his cheeks were starting to heat up and his eye were starting to prick. His bangs stuck to his forehead even as the rest of his hair was falling towards the floor.
He felt something crawl over his legs, most likely another rat. He didn't care. He'd gotten used to his personal space being invaded by all kinds of critters. As long as they stayed on the outsaid of his suit—and yes there was a story there—he didn't mind. Unfortunately, this rat sent a few little sheets of dust down into his face. He sneezed, causing his body to swing a little and the pipeline to creak under his weight.
"Careful up there Wing-a-ding," said Jason over the communicator in his ear.
"Worried about me?" he teased automatically.
"Pft, wishful thinking," Jason scoffed.
Dick could imagine Jason rolling his eyes under his helmet. But he imagined his brother was smiling too. If he squinted, Dick could just make out Jason's boot sticking out from behind a few card-board boxes at the back of the storage house. He smiled, grateful that he wasn't doing stakeouts alone anymore. Even if they couldn't really talk while waiting for the bad guys to show, it was nice to have someone there. It kept things interesting.
"Hey, bluebird?" Jason said after a few minutes more of silence.
"Yeah?" said Dick.
"Were you always an incorrigible prankster?"
Even with the sound filters in his helmet to mask his voice, Jason sounded a little unsure of himself. It was like he wanted to know the answer and didn't at the same time. Dick said nothing for a long moment.
They never really talked about their relationship before Jason died. Back then, they hadn't been close. Back then, Dick would be the first to admit it, he'd been an asshole to Jason as often as not. They both had their own hurt, their own lives, their own dreams. Being brothers had taken a back seat. So, whenever one of them brought up what things were like 'back then', they both seemed to shut down.
Their new relationship still seemed a little fragile at times, and Dick at least, was reluctant to jeopardize it. Dick knew that apologies were never enough, no matter how much he meant them, so he simply ignored the past and hoped Jason would do the same. He didn't want to dredge things up, not when there was nothing to do about them. It was probably selfish not to want to talk about his mistakes with Jason way back when—strike that, it was definitely selfish—but it was the only thing he could do.
"Hey, dick," said Jason, "you gonna answer the question?"
Dick sighed so that Jason could hear it. "Yeah. I was."
"B never said. Agent A neither. Why?"
"Probably because they were hoping…" Dick cut himself, "well, I was never very good at them back then. Plastic wrap over the toilet seat may be a classic, but it never could get Batman."
Jason was silent for a moment, completely ignoring the set up to roast his brother for his incompetence. "What were you going to say before?" he asked.
Dick pinched the bridge of his nose. His eyes were really starting to prick now. Seven minutes of hanging by his knees was a long time to be upside-down.
"What were you going to say?" Jason repeated.
"just that…B and Agent A were probably hoping we'd find some common ground there. My relationship with B was shit, but I know he was hoping I'd help out with you. Keep you safe and all that shit. Guess…never mind."
"We would have gotten into so much trouble," said Jason, giving him an out that Dick hadn't expected. He sounded…wistful almost…but only for a second. "But I would have had to take the lead. You're shit at pranking people."
"Excuse you! Today was epic! Fucking genius, I tell you!"
"Oh look, I think I see the bad guys," said Jason.
Epilogue Group Text with Dick, Jason, Tim, and Alfred
Jason: Alfred, when you go to bed tonight, thank God for hair dye and styling gell. Dick looks amazing
Alfred: Indeed Master Jason
Dick: Alfred, you can also tell God he'll be seeing Jason very shortly
AN: Sorry I'm having such a hard time posting this. The format keeps getting fucked up.
