Notes: Merry belated Christmas, or Happy early New Year! I was planning to update at least one or two months earlier, but 2016 was fucking rough.

This infuriated the townsmen as no mere theft would have done. They gave nothing away, and they knew that their enemies were those that did.

Nick sinks into his bed, and he's not sure when he falls asleep or not, but he wakes up sometime around sunset and realizes he's forgotten to turn the lamp off. In a column of fading light, the Bat-Signal waits on his desk.

"Dad's a serial-killer," he tells it. "Also, I'm not a kid. Why would I start using you again?"

Silence.

"God, fuck you!"

"Nick, did Jeff call you this time?" Arthur sticks his head in. "Jeff doesn't get in trouble!"

"Just talking to myself, Uncle."

"Oh, okay." He leaves.

A couple hours before lunch, Aunt Bea realizes she's short of celery and carrots, so Nick heads to the store and runs into Blaine, who's already finished his grocery run. That's also when he meets up with his former therapist and Blaine's current one, Sansa fucking Stark.

He might not be able to tell anyone her awesome Iron Man birth name, but she can't read minds.

…He hopes.

"Hello, you two!" She waves.

"Hey, Sansa. What's…"

Three people filter over to Sansa with stuff for her shopping cart: Her "unattainable in at least three ways" husband Loras, an equally hot girl with brown curls, and a giant blonde woman who might have more muscles than Blaine. (Aside from the blonde, everyone's at least a couple inches shorter than Sansa and it's kind of hilarious.)

"Is everyone in Britain hot?!" Nick demands.

"Nick!" Blaine hits his shoulder.

"Is everyone in America jailbait?" Hot Brunette retorts.

"Miss Tyrell!" The blonde chides.

Sansa's about to say something else, but she gives up and sighs. "Okay. Nick and Blaine, this is my husband Loras and his sister Margaery -"

"You're married?!" Blaine gapes.

"How many people have you not told?" Margaery laughs.

"This is Loras' sister, Margaery," Sansa continues with a glare, "and this is Brienne. Marg, Brienne, and Loras, these are Blaine and Nick, two of the kids I work with. Well, I used to work with Nick, but now it's Blaine."

"Huh," Blaine shakes their hands in turn. "Is your sister here, Sansa?"

"No, she's… not here," Sansa falters.

"…Yes?" Blaine affirms.

Damn it, why is Blaine gay and already with the love of his life? Nick wonders. He and Sansa are so not-matching that they should totally bang. Wrong hair, wrong build, AND wrong height. Blaine would punch anyone stupid enough to tell Sansa he's too short for her -

Shit, someone's looking at him. "What?"

"Oh my god." Blaine holds his temple. "I'm sorry, Nick spaces out a lot. This one time, he ended up in Canada."

"Dude!" Nick declares, affronted. "I wasn't in Canada because I'm an idiot! I ate some weed brownies with Martin, and that was before we knew edibles are way stronger than -"

"Nick!" Blaine and Sansa join in a duet of annoyed concern, and Blaine clamps a hand over Nick's mouth for emphasis.

Margaery is the living embodiment of the cat-smile emoji right now. "I need your number," she tells Nick, to Loras' sigh.

"Marg, can I at least buy groceries without you getting someone's number?" Sansa pleads. "Wait until the car park, please."

"Is that what British people call a parking lot?!" Blaine asks as they drift to the cash registers. "That's adorable!"

You know, Blaine and Sansa's personalities match pretty well, Nick thinks again. Blaine is everyone's knight in shining armor, and Sansa is a princess or something. And they're both depressed as fuck.

"I'm heading to the self-checkout," he waves. "Later, Blaine."

"Oh - if that's all you're getting, just stick it here." Sansa pushes a bag up to make room.

"Sweet!" He puts it on the conveyor belt.

"Sansa, you just gave Nick more weed money!" Blaine jokes.

"Five dollars?" She laughs. "I'm such an enabler!"

"He has a superpower for hiding things," the tenor says to her. "One time we took his wallet and counted his money, but he still managed to buy stuff. David nearly had a heart attack."

Thank you, decoy wallet that doesn't have my cards, Nick thinks with a grin.

The chatter weaves into the beeps of the cash register. Nick grabs his stuff once it's scanned, then waves goodbye to Blaine and Sansa in the parking lot (car park!), and heads back home.

The rest of the day is pretty boring. There's nothing to do in summer, two of the most fun Warblers are on vacation, and you can't really top how the school year ended with three of your friends getting kidnapped. (Plus, one of them missed getting assaulted by three inches, because everyone loves a certain Hobbit-sized Fight Club member in the worst way possible.) Nick wanders the house between gaming, Facebook, and other electronic things.

In his room, the Bat-Signal is still on his desk, with a light coat of dust except for the spots where people held it. He sighs, grabs a shirt from the hamper, and runs it over the wood.

"This doesn't mean I'm okay with my serial-killer dad," he informs it. "I'm just bored. At this rate, I'm going to start cleaning my damn room."

Newly black aside from splotches of bare wood, he leaves it on the corner and checks out the window: The sun is going down.

The Bat-Signal waits.

"Fiiiiiine." He sticks it in his bag on the way out into the living room. "This still doesn't mean I'm okay with Dad yet."

His cousin Milton's in the living room. "Mill, is Aunt Bea around?"

"Backyard."

"If she asks where I went, I'm with Jeff at the park," Nick says. A couple feet before he reaches the door, he stops to add: "Gerald Park, not Franklin."

"You're going outside? Is your laptop charging?" Milton jokes.

Nick laughs as he opens the door.

Gerald Park is one of those smallish parks, mostly used for picnics and joggers who need to take a break. Everyone's cleared out by the time it's sundown.

Jeff parks by the old warehouse across the street, and Nick takes a good look at the wall. There's a pretty big space between the windows, so he tries to gauge the trees' heights from here. "Please tell me we're not doing something illegal."

"Don't worry, man, just trying something out."

"That doesn't mean 'law-abiding.'" Jeff locks the car.

"It's not illegal, I swear!" Nick tells him. "Just give me a boost into that tree across the street."

"Is it technically legal, but not advisable?" Jeff continues, and they walk after a car passes them.

"Dude!" He rolls his eyes. "Look: You boost me into the tree. I will put something there - it's not drugs! - and then I'll get down from the tree. It'll take five seconds."

"…Okay," the blond concedes.

From his seat on a branch, Nick has to break off some needle-filled twigs, but once the flashlight has a clear path to the wall, Jeff starts laughing his ass off. "Oh my god! The Bat-Signal?!"

And even without knowing Jeff for a gazillion years, it's pretty damn clear that this is the. Best. Laugh. Ever. He fucking falls down, he's laughing so hard.

Nick has to help him back up when he climbs down from the tree, but he's grinning. "We're done," he says. "See? Five seconds. Let's go do something."

"Nightwing, you're just gonna leave it there?" Jeff fishes for his keys. "What's it for?"

"Don't laugh, okay?"

"If I laugh any more right now, I'm gonna lose a lung."

"I'm serious." Shit, now his hands are twitchy. Why did he have to get all emotional?

They step back into the car, and Nick can't really focus on anything besides the heat in his face.

"Nick, are you doing something illegal after I drop you off at home?" Jeff puts the keys in the ignition, but doesn't turn the engine on.

"Goddamn it!" Thank you, Jeff's Hot Teacher Instincts! He's way too pissed off to feel awkward now. "This is the opposite of illegal! I need to get my dad out of hiding! So we can put him in jail for breaking Stalker Dude out of jail!"

"I… holy shit." Well, at least Jeff's not laughing. "Are the police in on it?"

"I thought it up ten minutes ago."

"Nick, you have to tell the police something." He turns the engine on and starts backing out of the space. "Even if it's just 'hey, I'm gonna try and lure my dad out of hiding, I'm letting you know in case it works,'" The blond waits for a car to pass.

"Fine, whatever." Nick sighs and checks his phone. "You worry about everything, man."

"Also, why are you using the Bat-Signal and not just calling him?"

"Don't laugh."

"What." Alex stops at a news channel. "Tori, check this out."

"Don't tell me if it's Littlefinger." He checks the curtains out of habit and rubs at his hair - the dye needs a couple more days to settle down, but at least his hair clearly isn't red.

"It's the opposite of Littlefinger." He turns the volume up.

Tori can't help gaping as photos of a misty Bat-Signal hovers on the wall of a warehouse.

"- and there's been a noticeable drop in crime over the past week," the reporter in a headscarf says. "More people are traveling the street than usual just to take pictures of it, but they also go home earlier, so it's not clear which of these factors are responsible, if at all."

"Have there been any sightings of a man in a bat-suit, Amira?"

"I know, right?" Alex pokes the older man's shoulder to shake him out of it.

"That's Nick," he strains out.

"Your kid?"

"No, my boyfriend." He sighs. "Yes, my son!"

"How did he get a Bat-Signal?"

"Don't laugh."

"Ooooooookay," Prentiss says when she and Hotch meet up with Nick. "I wish you would have given us a little bit of warning, but… I guess we have a plan now?"

"Nick, are you sure he's gonna show up?" Hotch wonders.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I fucked up, which means he feels bad. So he's going to try and make amends. Because he's responsible."

"Nick, you didn't fuck up." Hotch wonders if this is a distraction, but considering Jeff had to wrangle him over here, it doesn't seem like they're planning anything.

Well, anything besides 'luring a kidnapper and his accomplice out of hiding' with a confident knowledge of said accomplice's train of thought.

"What the hell does calling the police mean… right, you're FBI. Of course you don't think that's screwing up."

"Dude, it's called following the law." Jeff sags in his chair.

Hotch looks at Prentiss - no help there - and he really hopes this isn't the 'three versions of truth' thing that Wes was talking about.

"He's trying to get me to talk to him." Tori sighs.

"How do you know it's him and not just some kid having fun?"

"It's been two days since you blew our cover in the worst way ever," Tori points out with a glare, "and the Bat-Signal, one version I had in my house, that my son knows - and more importantly, has a motive to use because you kidnapped three of his friends - shows up on TV. Coincidence?"

"Okay, good point." Alex jumps when passersby drift on the other side of the wall, but the curtains are drawn and it's pretty dark. "Are you gonna go, though?"

He winces. "Kind of."

"Yes/no answer, man," Alex points out. "How can you kind of show up?"

"I found out in Nick's second week of high school." Tori grabs his blue notepad and a pen.

"Nick, what did you do?" Tori comes to the teacher's office to see his utterly bored son fuming in a chair, with his mother Jean sitting next to him.

"It's more what he doesn't do, Mr. Grayson," she says. "Nick's skipped class the past week."

"I dropped off my homework and answered 'yes' on roll call," Nick points out. "That's literally all the government needs for me to be there. When you try to punish me for doing my shit, they're gonna need an explanation."

"But ethically," Tori reminds him, "school isn't just for teaching you stuff -"

"'It's for teaching us how the world works.'" Nick grins. "And I learned you can't do more than give me detention if my grades are fine."

"They can't be fine after a week!" Tori looks at the teacher: Her head's on the desk. "Really?"

She groans and mumbles something that sounds like 'average.'

"Oh god." Tori pinches his nose. "Nick, have you thought about a hobby to burn off all that energy you spend finding loopholes?"

"Singing is cool," Nick muses. "Doesn't Dalton have a choir or something?"

Another cluster of people outside are talking - or more like screaming and laughing at jokes, thanks to an early bar visit.

There are always things you regret saying to teens since their half-finished brains go straight to "everything is shit" instead of "talking things out" or "taking deep breaths," but it's especially bad with Nick.

"All you did was tell him he could skip a couple of visits if he hated going back and forth between you and Jean?" The lawyer wonders. "Why does he want a restraining order?"

"He made up something about my place being too far to see his friends and he's upset about it," Tori tells her. "To be fair, he doesn't have his license yet, so I'd need to go with him everywhere even if I didn't have work."

"Oh." She looks both amused and pitying. "So he's trying to outsmart you."

"He's just being stubborn," Jean scoffs. "Outsmarting is when he spends an hour looking for my alcohol stash but doesn't actually drink it, because he knows I have to find a new spot anyway."

"He drinks mine!"

"Get some Pabst labels and stick them on your actual beer," Jean advises. "He said PBR is the hipster drink now."

Currently they're all playing some sort of reverse-chicken game - where the loser isn't the first one turning away, it's the one who reaches out to their own damn family. But he never really treats them like losers, does he? He answers Jean's calls and responds to Tori's messages - if he were a couple years older and in college, this situation would be basically normal.

And now he's using the Bat-Signal like he instructed Tori to do, all those years before he got mad and rebellious. Or discovered weed.

Say what you want about Nick being a troublemaker, but he keeps his damn word. Tori taps a few notes of a melody onto the notepad, then starts writing.

After a couple of days, the Bat-Signal starts to get wispy, so Nick and Jeff drive up with new batteries. Something blue flutters near the corner of the signal - it's been taped onto the base - and Nick sticks the note in his pocket before he switches the old batteries out.

"Bro, call the FBI," Nick says as he takes a piece of matching paper out of his bag. "We're gonna head to my dad's place."

"Is that from your dad?" Jeff asks.

"I told you he felt bad about me fucking things up." Nick wedges the Bat Signal tighter into the crook of a branch. The note's top quarter reads 'Answer at my house,' and he unfolds it:

Why did you get a restraining order?

"Guys?" Prentiss calls them into the room after she gets Jeff's text. "The Bat-Signal worked."

"Whoever's listening: Please don't let Jack be like this," Hotch tells the ceiling. "Drugs and sex are sort of normal, but playing tag with former FBI relatives is my limit."

"It's a good thing you'll never go rogue, Hotch," Rossi congratulates him. "Are we using civilian cars or official?"

"Civilian, but take some Kevlar just in case," Prentiss informs them. "Spyke himself isn't violent unless he needs to be, but he works with some pretty lively people."

Tori Grayson's house is locked and dark - but nobody expected a fancy welcome. The two other cars arrive and park quietly a few houses down.

"We'll be right here, so if anything happens, just yell for us and run," Hotch says.

"No problem - dude!" Jeff latches around Nick's torso and drags him away from the backyard fence. "You have the key!" He hisses. "Just unlock the door!"

"That's how I accidentally found Blaine's stalker," Nick says. "If Dad's even here, you think he's stupid enough to not have a plan?"

"Morgan," Hotch sighs. "Standby on the front door. I'll go with Nick and Jeff."

"Got it, Hotch." Morgan has a fit of suspicious coughing.

"Dad?" Nick comes in through the window - the lights are out and nothing is unusual.

Well, almost nothing.

When he gets to the front hallway, there's a bat drawn in black chalk on the right wall. Another bat is on the door to Nick's room, along with the words 'camera inside.'

"I told you he wasn't dumb enough to be here," Nick whispers to the others. "All I have to do is talk to the damn camera."

"Not taking any chances," Hotch tells them, and puts his earphone in. "Garcia?"

"Yeah, Hotch?"

"Nick says there's a camera in his room, so there's probably a computer or some kind of line attached to it. Nick, we're not -"

He's already gone inside, with the click of the door and Jeff's face-palm answering Hotch.

"We're… not going in with Nick because that might blow our cover," Hotch finishes. "Try to find anything coming from this house."

"This is the most superhero sting ever," Garcia affirms. "I bet he's actually inside and we're not gonna find out for five minutes."

"Garcia, this isn't a comic book."

Tori's inside. Sitting at the desk, almost looking normal if it weren't for the fact that no lights are on and everything's gray-blue from the moon. Tori's hair doesn't look right: Nick squints and realizes that it's a dark, flat brown instead of red.

"Why is your hair boring?" Nick wonders.

He writes on the notepad and holds it up: Disguise.

Then a new statement: If you just wanted to hang out with your friends more, I would have gotten you a car or something.

"One friend," Nick corrects. "Jeff."

Nick, it's normal to want to spend time with your friends instead of your parents. That doesn't need a restraining order. But he doesn't hold it up yet, because he remembers the disastrously funny weekend after Nick told his mother he was bi, and how Nick's living with his aunt instead of his mother now…

"I - I figured you'd get weird about me spending all that fucking time with Jeff, and restraining orders are just a piece of paper. We barely pay attention to it anymore, but -"

Oh god, Nick. Please don't finish this story. All the little pieces are falling into place -

"- had to transfer because some douchebags beat him up after a dance, and Kurt transferred when people said they'd kill him," Nick goes on. "You guys know the shit with Mom when I came out? I lit up in the house and she told me if I left, I couldn't come back. Sure, I pissed her off, but she didn't do that the other times I was being stupid -"

He has to move. He has to move or say something so he can give his son a damn hug. But there are people on the other side of the door, and then he'll only have fifteen seconds instead of thirty to get away.

"Nick." There's ten seconds before someone breaks down the door, so he holds tighter. "You thought I'd kick you out?"

"Kicking me out is no fucking deal! I moved in with Aunt Bea!" Nick presses his face into Tori's shoulder. "I didn't want you to send me to a straight camp or drag me to Iowa to kill off the gay half of bisexual, so I got the damn restraining order because of Jeff!"

The door's kicked in.

"Spyke?" Hotch's hands are up. "Let him go. We don't want to hurt either of you."

"You didn't bring backup."

"We didn't think you'd be here," Hotch admits. "Now let him go."

Good. Now he has twenty seconds to get out the window, under the fence's loose board, and then to the back alley with Alex.

"Nick, I love you," Tori says, but that only makes him cry harder. "You know that, right?"

"I got the restraining order on THE WRONG FUCKING PARENT?!"

"You thought you needed one." Tori lets Nick go. "You thought you needed one because you didn't know how I'd react, and that - is - okay! You hear me, Nick?"

"MOTHERFUCKING BITCH!"

"MORGAN!" Hotch yells over the windowpane slamming back down. "BACKYARD!"

By the time Morgan's jumped the fence to see Spyke barreling through a loose board in the fence, he has to waste a precious five seconds getting back over.

Prentiss instinctively goes straight towards the neighbor's open yard, and she barely catches Spyke slipping sideways into the back alley. When she switches course for the alley herself, he's already in the car.

There are no license plates.

Technically this will be classified as "unexpected," since the BAU wasn't as prepared as a rogue FBI agent who's spent the past few years channeling Batman. In extremely literal ways.

But in the hour before the BAU checks in with the Westerville police, while the rogue's teenaged son is crying rage-tears in the backseat, it's hard to think about putting Spyke in jail.

Hotch waves to Prentiss and Morgan when they come back empty-handed and panting. "I'll take these two home. Jeff, try to calm him down."

Jeff clips into the backseat. "Nick? You got the restraining order because of me?"

"That's not calming him down -"

"You, my aunt, and my uncle, yeah." Nick wipes his face. "Kicking me out, that's one thing, but I couldn't do shit about moving too far until I turned eighteen, got a job, and ditched the job for a plane ticket back to Aunt Bea's house. And now I got the restraining order on the wrong fucking parent, goddamn it!"

He tries to strangle the passenger's seat then, so Jeff does double-duty of hugging him and keeping him restrained. They can't get anything else from him on the ride home.

"Well, nobody even thought he'd be there," Reid says. "That was needlessly risky, even considering he planned an escape route. What did he talk to Nick about?"

"All he asked was why Nick got the restraining order on him," Hotch says. "Nothing about Alex or Blaine. Or if there was anyone else around. He wasn't that surprised that I kicked in the door, but still - he knew we didn't have backup."

"Did Nick answer?"

"He was afraid of coming out." Hotch rubs his temples. "With how two of his friends were treated for being openly gay and Nick's mom kicking him out later on, he had a lot of good reasons to think his dad wouldn't take it well."

"And send him to straight camp," Prentiss says with a sympathetic nod.

"Straight camp, or force him to move away from a lot of important people in his life."

"He didn't need the restraining order, did he?" Morgan asks.

They really should throw the book at Spyke. That's the lawful thing to do.

"Team? Just because Tori loves his son doesn't mean he's not still a criminal," Hotch reminds them. "We have to find him. He's sheltering a kidnapper that someone else broke out of jail."

"Shit's gonna be hard, though," Morgan retorts, grinning. "He knew we didn't think he'd come, so he did just to trip us up."

"It's going to be even harder if we don't get a full eight to ten hours of sleep," JJ adds. "This night was a pretty wild ride."

"Guys, this isn't a comic book," Hotch says, though he can't control a corner of his mouth. "Spyke's not chuckling in the next panel and predicting our movements."

"Nightwing used the Bat-Signal," Rossi reminds him.

"Yes?"

"And it worked."

"…Yes."