A/N: So I'm going to come right out and say this: I'm not super strong on the New 52 and it's not my favorite. The Preboot universe is totally my home and that will probably show. I'm just super intrigued by Piper and David's relationship and I wanted to try them out. So sorry in advance for any and all inevitable goofs I make as I work on this fic. I love trying to stay close to the canon when I write, but I will most likely eff up something terrible while adapting the New 52.

It'll probably be fun anyway...? Maybe think of it as an accidental crossover with the Preboot universe ;)

Hartley strode into the decrepit warehouse that was being used as the Rogues' latest base of operations with half an intention of walking right back out again. Whereas he was intrigued by the camaraderie the costumed criminals of his city seemed to feel for each other, the few times the Pied Piper had tried to socialize with the other Rogues so far had ended disastrously for him. It seemed like Hartley fit in as well with costumed thugs as he had with lunchroom cliques in high school.

Still though. He wanted to give them a chance. Maybe time would help (and if nothing else, having contacts for work was a necessary part of these kinds of jobs).

He was holding a bag of liquor he didn't intend to drink as a peace offering. Last week he'd bruised his knuckles on Captain Boomerang's face when the asshole had called him a faggot. The memory of his first successfully thrown punch would continue to please him, but Hartley still felt that it was bad form to assault a potential coworker. Digger was possibly the most enthusiastic drinker of the gaggle of blatant alcoholics, so booze seemed like an appropriate apology.

Really, he was lucky the man had already been drunk during their confrontation. Hartley wasn't a physical fighter. He was a plotter and a tech kid. His heists had all been elaborately planned to keep him from having to actually punch anybody, ever. If Cold hadn't stepped between them and Boomerang had managed to get to his feet and fight back, Hartley wouldn't have the illusion that he could fight earning him an odd kind of respect from the other Rogues. He'd need to be careful to preserve that misconception.

Hartley got past a mountain of boxes by the entryway that obscured the dimly lit portion of the warehouse they were using for planning sessions and social activities. He was expecting to see a crowd of burly, unwashed men in ridiculous suits slouched around a poker table with junk food and cheap beer.

It looked like that was might have been how the evening began, but the chairs around the poker table were empty and the burly, unwashed men were only three in number, and those three were pacing around the room in states of agitation while snapping at each other.

Hartley set his burden down on the table and then grabbed Mick's arm. "What's going on?"

"What's going on is we're gonna fucking kill Digger, that's what's going on!" Mick yelled. He waved his arm first at the TV, which was running a news report on a botched bank robbery in downtown Central, and then indicated a folding chair off in the shadows.

Upon closer inspection, the folding chair was being used by a groggy, semi-conscious and bloodied man.

The news report wasn't currently giving a clue about the man's identity, so Hartley turned back to Mick. "Boomerang took a hostage?"

"Yeah, a fucking cop!"

"What?"

"I didn't know he was a cop!" Digger yelled defensively. "How the hell was I supposed to know that? He just said to take him and let everyone else go and I did! How was I supposed to know that off-duty cops look like everyone else?"

Hartley smacked a hand to his forehead and questioned once more whether he actually wanted to continue networking with these people.

"We need to get rid of him," Cold growled. "Do you know how much heat kidnapping a god damned cop is going to bring down on us?"

"You've only been yelling about it for the past twenty minutes or so, so yeah, I'm starting to get an idea!" Digger yelled back. "I'm not stupid!"

"Oh, I'd beg to differ," Mick muttered darkly.

"Um…guys, why don't you just let him go?" Hartley asked. "I mean, Digger made his escape and it's not like we were going to keep using this place for our meet-ups forever anyway."

"We can't just let him go," Digger said with a sneer. "Then the next time I need a hostage no one'd take me seriously. They wouldn't believe I'd actually do the bastard in and I'd get collared. Use your sense, you useless fucking nance."

Hartley leveled a glare at him. "So what's your brilliant plan? Are you going to try to ransom him then?"

"This isn't a fucking movie, Hart, and besides, I'd say it's fairly obvious the word 'plan' doesn't enter into this conversation," Cold said. "If Digger knew how to plan, he wouldn't be in this mess."

No one missed the significance of that wording.

"Wait, you guys are gonna help me out, aren't you?" Digger asked.

Cold zipped his parka up and started for the door. "You got yourself into this mess, Harkness. Get yourself out. This fuck up doesn't concern the Rogues."

Mick seemed to like that train of thought, because he was on Len's heels and out the door in a heartbeat.

Digger started clawing at his hair while he paced around the room. "Fuck, fuck, fuck! What do I do now?"

Hartley took one look at the panicking, heavily armed idiot losing his shit in the isolated warehouse and then threw a mental curse at Len and Mick. How could they leave Boomerang alone with a hostage when he was like this? If that police officer got hurt it wouldn't matter that Digger acted alone. The full force of the Central City and the Keystone PD were going to come down on all costumed lawbreakers, and they'd have the scarlet dildo's help.

"Digger, calm down. Just take a few deep breaths-" Hartley reached out to touch Digger's arm but he jerked away and grabbed one of his razor boomerangs, poised to lash out at Hartley.

"Don't you fucking touch me, you god damned faggot! I'll rip your fucking throat out!"

Hartley held up his hands and took a cautious step back. "You need to stop and calm down. Digger, you're going to need a clear head to get out of this."

"What do you fucking care?" Digger spat.

"I still think the best thing you can do is to let the man go. You've got enough of a reputation that letting one hostage go after you've already made use of him won't damage the credibility of your threats in the future. You've…you've already done plenty of awful things." Hartley wasn't quite able to spin that into a compliment since he personally found the levels Captain Boomerang would stoop to during a heist disgusting. It was different from the calculated actions Cold might take when backed in a corner, or the way Mick might lose control if he got a little too into the fire to keep thinking clearly. Sometimes Digger was just cruel.

Digger lowered the boomerang. "Y'know what? I'm gonna follow Snart's lead on this. You care so damn much about the pig, he's your problem now. I'm leaving."

"What? Oh hell no. Just because I don't want you to kill that man doesn't mean I'm going to clean up your fucking mess!"

But Digger made good on his threat and stomped out the door. He even took the beer with him.

Hartley ran an agitated hand through his hair and let out a string of curses. His anger only lasted a few minutes before a cold feeling of resignation replaced it. He was used to being dismissed by people at this point in his life and besides that, it's not like it was all that difficult to break out of Iron Heights.

The poor cop let out a groan and Hartley suddenly remembered that he ought to be thinking of the man as a person and not just a burden. It wasn't his fault he was in this mess, unless one wanted to hold his heroic sacrifice against him. Personally, Hartley was content to put all the blame on Digger for being an incompetent super criminal. What kind of douchebag had to resort to taking hostages during a simple bank robbery?

Hartley switched off the TV then approached the shadowy corner. He crouched down in front of the man so that they were eye level, which didn't really help much since he was slumped over with his head down. It looked like he'd taken quite the beating from his captors. If Hartley had to guess he'd say the brunt of the injuries came after the Rogues had realized he was an off duty cop. He'd been bound to the chair and it didn't look like he'd been able to defend himself even minimally from the beating, so it must have happened once he'd already been a hostage.

What a bunch of assholes.

"Hey," Hartley whispered, keeping his voice low under the assumption the poor guy's head must have been throbbing. "I'm going to pull you into the light so I can get a better look at you. One of the advantages of working with Captain Cold is that ice is always readily available, and it looks like you could probably use some on those bruises."

The man let out a groan, which Hartley decided to take as an assent. He'd liked to have been gentler getting the chair closer to the center of the room, but the hostage was all dead weight, and that dead weight was tall and well-built. After much straining on his part and an awful lot of jostling and scraping for the poor hostage, Hartley managed to get him into the light.

To his great displeasure, he discovered that his hostage was fucking gorgeous. Which was actually kind of impressive, considering how beat up he was. Somehow, in the process of taking a very real beating from grown men in a state of panic this guy had come out looking Hollywood beat up. His thick dark hair was falling attractively over his eyes, and even the way the blood was smearing down his face looked artful.

"Wow," Hartley breathed. He gave himself a little shake, then set about cleaning the guy's cuts. He gently touched a rag with a block of ice in it against the nastiest looking of the bruises. The improvised icepack seemed to revive the guy a little.

He jerked his head up and peered at Hartley out of suspicious (and dreamy) brown eyes, once of which was badly obscured by puffy bruised skin. "Who…what are you?"

Piper lowered the icepack. "What do you mean what?"

The man squeezed his eyes shut in a grimace. "Sorry. Head's cloudy. I just had a delusion you were an ang-that is, never mind. You're one of them, aren't you? The guy with the sonic guns and the weird flutes."

Hartley tried not to smile too widely at what the man had let slip and ended up with a pleased smirk instead. So he looked like an angel, did he? That was kind of cute.

Oh, he really didn't want to end up liking a cop, even if the man was adorable.

"Yeah, that's me. The Piper."

"Ah. I'd heard you were more compassionate than your typical costumed whack job. Thank you. Can you ice my collarbone for a minute? I think it might be broken."

"Those fucking idiots," Hartley grumbled. He undid the top few buttons of the man's shirt and pulled it back. His comparatively dark skin (Hartley being a translucently pale WASP and all) was marred by horrendous looking bruises and it looked like he might have been burned in a few spots, which upset Hartley because so far he'd been under the impression that Mick hadn't joined in on beating up the helpless, handcuffed cop. He also tried to ignore the fact that under different circumstances that was exactly the kind of chest he'd like to trace with his fingertips and that was definitely a collarbone worthy of worship and love bites.

Why couldn't Digger have grabbed an ugly hostage?

Hartley was as gentle as he could placing the ice against the tender looking flesh but the man still gasped and bit into his lip, trying to suppress his reaction to what must have been some pretty awful pain. "Sorry, sorry!"

"No, don't move it. The ice feels better, I swear."

"O-okay. Um…look, you really need medical help. I'm going to get you to a hospital, okay?"

The grimace gave way to a look of equally pained looking confusion. "Why aren't I dead?"

"Mostly because you're a cop, I suppose. I mean, it has nothing to do with me. I got stuck with you because I don't kill anyone, ever, and the rest of the guys bend the rules a bit when they panic. But they don't want to be cop killers."

"Is that how the media is reporting it?"

"Huh? I-I guess." Hartley frowned. "Aren't you a cop?"

"Kind of. I'm a tech in the crime lab."

Hartley gaped at him for a moment and then quickly dropped his gaze to his hands and only his own hands where they were pressing a rag-covered block of ice against a yummy looking chest that hinted at washboard abs (though sadly there was no reason to undo more buttons to confirm his suspicion that his sexy-hostage was beautifully toned all over). Being a scientist didn't make him any less sexy to Hartley, who was a devout nerd and never managed to stay attracted to a man, however gorgeous, unless he had an equally sexy brain to complement his looks.

Those standards probably had something to do with the long ass dry spells between his relationships. That and it was hard to maintain a relationship when you were a supervillain.

"I'm going to head out to my car for a second. I've got some of my gear out there. I'll get those handcuffs off and then we'll get you to a hospital, okay?"

The man didn't answer, but only watched him go with an incredulous look. Hartley figured he was still a little loopy, which he had every right to be, all things considered.

It took Hartley seconds to unlock the cuffs with a bit of wire, which seemed to amuse his hostage. "You're the one who breaks out of Iron Heights all the time, aren't you?"

"We all break out of Iron Heights," Hartley reminded him. He just happened to be the best at it.

"Hm. Well if you ever felt like switching sides, we could certainly use your expertise to engineer a better pair of handcuffs." He rubbed at his wrists and flexed his fingers, no doubt getting feeling back into his sore appendages. Hartley handed him the soggy icepack and averted his gaze when the man immediately pressed it back over his collarbone. The ice had melted enough for the action to send rivulets of water down the man's chest.

He let out a satisfied sigh, and Hartley genuinely feared he might get wood from helping a stranger who'd been beaten bloody. Which made him all kinds of uncomfortable, but it's not like he was getting turned on from the fact that the guy was in pain! He was just really, really hot.

And he'd thought Hartley was an angel when he was all loopy, which was still stupidly adorable.

And he was a scientist, and scientists are sexy.

"Rathaway, your face is all flushed. Is something the matter?"

"Nothi-you know my name?"

The man blinked at him. "Yes…you're the Pied Piper. I've collected evidence from some of your crime scenes."

"O-oh." That's right. Public record, multiple arrests, and the man was a police scientist. Hartley gave himself a little shake. "Sorry. I keep forgetting I'm technically notorious now. But it's weird when people know your name and you don't know theirs."

"Ah. Yes, I could see that."

Hartley waited. His hostage didn't say anything. Hartley let out a sigh, but he was still smirking. "So what's your name?"

"I see no advantage to telling a supervillain more about me than I already have."

"But I'm helping you!" Hartley exclaimed.

"You've said you were going to bring me to the hospital, but you haven't yet. I still have no real reason to trust you, Rathaway. Even though you do seem to be a better man than a lot of your peers."

Hartley rolled his eyes. "I said I'm going to bring you to the hospital and I mean it. Now how are you feeling? Can you walk on your own or do you need help?"

"I should be okay." The hostage moved to stand and almost fell over. Hartley caught him and steadied him, keeping an arm braced around his back.

"Just so you know, I'm physically a lot weaker than the other Rogues. You're going to have to bear as much of your own weight as you can for this to work," Hartley ground out.

"Of course," the man said. "Sorry. I had noticed you worked mostly with long range weapons. That'd be the reason?"

"Yes, the skinny tech savvy gay kid spent more time running from fights than engaging in them." Hartley got one of the man's arms slung over his shoulders and started taking slow, purposeful steps towards the car. "Can you carry a little more of your weight? At all?"

"I'm trying. So you're gay?"

"Less chit chat until we're in the car."

"Sorry."

Hartley was panting by the time he got his hostage settled into the front seat. He did the man's seatbelt for him, as quickly as possible so as to minimize the time he spent with his hand hovering over the gorgeous man's lap, and then climbed into the driver's side.

"I didn't realize you were openly gay," the man said, once Hartley had settled himself and started the car.

"I've never really hid it, but I suppose there's not much reason for it to come up while I'm robbing banks. By the by, it's a bit rich of you to ask questions about my sexuality when you won't even tell me your name."

"Fine, I'll tell you my first name. It's Carlos."

"No it's not."

The man smirked. "How'd you know I was lying?"

"Because you're not Hispanic. I mean, I suppose you could be mixed or adopted or something, but just so you know, I'm not one of those oblivious WASPs who think all brown people are the same. You're of southeast Asian descent."

The man looked impressed. "You're right."

"Mm. And with your accent, you either emigrated here when you were incredibly young or you're second or third generation, at least. You're definitely more Asian-American than Asian."

"Right again. You're more observant than I gave you credit for, Rathaway."

"Yeah, I'm more observant than a lot of people give me credit for."

"Mm." The man seemed to belong to that category as well. His eyes rested on a dog-eared book on socialism and sexuality that was on the seat next to him. "You know, there's an LGBT youth support group that used to meet in a church basement in Central. They almost had to shut down because of some ridiculous scandal. A few of the kids attending the meeting were homeless, and when the advisors found out they started letting them sleep in the basement so they wouldn't be on the streets. But the church didn't actually belong to them, they were only using it, and when the clergy found out they were furious."

"Yes, I'd heard about that," Hartley said, tone clipped.

"Well they didn't end up having to close down. They received a mysterious donation. No one can tell where it came from, but it provided them without enough money to purchase and restore their own building for their meetings. They're in the process of turning it into a shelter that specifically caters to LGBT youth. It's a rather remarkable story. We're trying not to look into it too closely, considering the amount of money donated perfectly matches the amount stolen from Rathaway Inc. earlier that week."

"Yeah, how 'bout that."

"A lot of people are saying the Rathaways got their just desserts. Considering their money is most likely providing for homeless gay kids-"

"And they put their own gay kid in that situation themselves, I'm aware," Hartley snapped. "It's not too late for me to change my mind about taking you to the hospital, you know."

The hostage smirked and fell silent. Hartley kept his attention on the road for the next few minutes, but he was quietly simmering over that. He was half-tempted into hypnotizing the man into answering his questions, but that seemed like a petty use for his potentially awful meta-abilities.

"You know," Hartley began again, "it'd be decent of you not to poke at my emotional scars while I'm ostensibly doing you a favor. Not to mention it's just underhanded. I lost what remained of my privacy after my first arrest, and I'd never really had much to begin with growing up as a one-percenter. My life is public record. Making use of that to get under my skin is completely tactless."

"You mean your first arrest in costume," the man said.

Hartley darted a glare at him before turning his attention back to the road. "What are you talking about?"

"You were arrested a few times before you became the Pied Piper, weren't you?"

"Well yeah-"

"And the notoriety didn't really start until you put the costume on."

"Please, it started pretty much when I was born. The tabloids were always hassling my parents. It was just a new level after I became a criminal," Hartley said. Which had been a fun side effect, because Hartley knew that if anyone was more annoyed than him about the amount of personal information on him that had become Google-able as a result of his super crime, it was Osgood Rathaway.

"How do you know so much about me anyway?" Hartley asked. He knew his life was spectacularly public, but he was also pretty sure very few people knew about his non-Piper arrests.

"I work at the police station, Rathaway. I've looked over the arrest records of all of you super criminals."

"Oh." That made sense. And he totally wasn't disappointed that the hot hostage hadn't shown a particular interest in him.

Because that would be weird.

He deserved the longest dry spell ever.

"Okay, we're pretty much here." Hartley pulled up in front of the ER and tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. He wasn't in costume and the plates on his car were clean, but there was still a very good chance he was going to get arrested bringing the hostage inside.

But the man couldn't walk on his own.

Well, there wasn't a better option. He wasn't just going to leave the guy on the curb with a 'good luck.'

The hostage's lovely brown eyes widened when Hartley opened the door for him and helped him with his seatbelt. Hartley held out a hand and the man took it, and leaned heavily on him once more for the long limp into the ER. They didn't say anything, focusing their attention on keeping the hostage on his feet. Hartley got him into one of the chairs in the waiting room and then flagged down a woman in scrubs.

"Hey, that guy there needs help. Can you get someone to take care of him?"

"Are you his healthcare proxy? You're going to have to fill out some paperwork before we can see him." The woman sounded almost bored as she went to get a clipboard full of forms.

Hartley let out an impatient breath. At least he hadn't been recognized. "No, I'm not his healthcare proxy. I don't even know his name."

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "Okay…so what exactly's going on?"

"He's a super criminal and I'm his hostage," the man said. "You should call the police before he gets away."

Hartley lost a few seconds he could have potentially used for his escape spluttering indignantly at his hostage. "Hey! It's not-I'm not even the one who took you hostage! I'm trying to help you!"

"And I appreciate it. I'll testify on your behalf if I'm able to."

"Fuck you!" Hartley flipped him the bird, then started running for the door. He was tackled well before he could reach it, and ten minutes later he was sitting in an examination room strapped into place with medical restraints while five surly looking security guards waited to hand him off to the Central City PD. Apparently his hostage had also filled the staff in on his abilities as an escape artist.

Hartley wanted to be mad, really he did. But mostly he was just intrigued.

He was more determined than ever to find out just who the hell this hostage was.