Pinch Me, ‘Cause I Must Be Dreaming
@holdendadcliffe asked for: Diego & Patch + 40
St. Patrick’s Day was never a fun day to be a cop in a big city. It fell right under Halloween and just a smidge above the Fourth of July. Essentially, any day where costumes and/or the copious consumption of alcohol were encouraged on a mass scale was not a fun day to be a cop.
Eudora Patch agreed vehemently with the widespread sentiment and she’d only been on the force for a year. What little enjoyment she used to get out of the three aforementioned holidays was long gone and, if there was one thing that made an already difficult job even harder on the Holy Trinity of Horrible Work Days, it was masked vigilantes who were convinced they were Batman and that this city was Gotham. {Although, the vigilante-in-question looked a great deal more like Robin and maybe, just maybe, Eudora found it fun to rub that fact in his face. (Just a little.) But, mostly, Diego Hargreeves was a pain in her ass.}
On this particular evening, she and Chuck Beaman had apprehended him trying to apprehend a drunken bodega robber who was dressed head-to-toe in a green suit. Who did this guy think he was? The Riddler? He certainly wasn’t going to help with the whole “convince-Diego-that-this-isn’t-a-comic-book-and-we-can-handle-things” spiel. Regardless, she couldn’t exactly let Diego off the hook. Apprehending criminals without a badge, especially when you do it at knife-point, happens to be a big no-no. (Or, rather, she shouldn’t let him off the hook - but she was still going to because a part of her, deep down, respected what he was trying to do.)
“You’ve really gotta stop doing this. There are only so many times I can ‘let you off with a warning’ before the chief’s gonna insist that we bring you in,” Eudora muttered, arms crossed over her chest, clearly looking less than amused as Diego sat on the hood of her squad car while Beaman booked their Green Adversary.
“Well, if the PD wasn’t filled with a bunch of incompetent morons, I wouldn’t have to do this. But here we are,” Diego quipped, prompting Eudora to raise a clearly not-amused eyebrow.
“Yeah. Incompetent,” Diego agreed - and, to her abject horror, he reached over and pinched her arm.
“What the hell, Hargreeves?” she snapped, scowling, and her frown only deepened when he smirked.
“You’re not wearing green on St. Patrick’s Day. That’s pretty incompetent.”
“Oh yeah? Where’s your green, asshole?” she huffed, taking in his black tactical suit and that ridiculous Robin mask. The very last thing that Eudora Patch expected Diego Hargreeves to do was to lift his foot up to the hood of the squad car, where he was still perched, and to then tug up his pant-leg, revealing a pair of bright green socks with shamrocks on them.
Despite her very best efforts not to allow it, a grin involuntarily pulled at the corners of her lips.
His own grin growing, Diego let his foot drop down onto the ground again, springing up from the car’s hood and taking a few steps closer so that he was hovering in her personal space.
“Have I entered an alternate universe,” he began, his voice barely more than a whisper, “or did you really just crack a smile for me?”
Rolling her eyes, Eudora gave him a light shove, walking over to the driver’s side door and tugging it open once Beaman had their robber in custody, safely locked away in the back of the squad car.
“You’re an idiot and you’re seeing things, Hargreeves,” she quipped, leaning against the door just long enough to say, “Stay out of trouble.”
“I make no promises,” was his response, as always - and he was fairly sure, although not certain, that he saw her smile again before the car door shut behind her and she and Beaman drove back to the station.
