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Dick sighs and closes the door behind him, ready to take his suit jacket off and have a bowl of cereal after a long day of mortgage fraud at the office. He turns around, intending to do just that, when a familiar mop of black hair has him freezing in place.
“Tim?”
“Hey,” Dick’s brother says with a hesitant little wave.
“What are you- Why are you-”
“I’ve missed hanging out with you,” Tim states. A simple explanation that is a cover up for some much bigger reasons, based on the nervous tightness to Tim’s posture.
“Right…” Dick says slowly. “So what is the real reason why you are here? Why you are dropping by my apartment while I am deeply undercover with the FBI?”
Tim bites his bottom lip, looking anywhere but at Dick.
“Am I not allowed to just visit my brother?”
“Tim.”
“Alright! It’s- I-” Tim stops abruptly, and to Dick’s shock, his eyes begin to fill with tears. “I just want to feel safe again!”
“Timmy, what-”
“I used to feel safe on Gotham rooftops, with a camera lens between me and the world. Because I was young and naive and indestructible. Then I felt safe when I was Robin, because Robin is magic. And I also felt safe out of the mask because- well, because I was invisible.” He stops to draw in a shaky breath, brilliant blue eyes boring into Dick’s. “I was invisible before, but now I’m not! You have left, and Alfred is- is gone, and Jason is back but he is never around, so I am alone with him all the time! There are just the two of us there, and I don’t want to go home, but I don’t want to stay, I just want to feel safe again!”
The tears that were just filling his eyes now spill over. In a fraction of a second, Dick is pulling his little brother into a hug, shaking almost as much as Tim.
“Does he- does he hit you?” Dick whispers.
“N-no,” Tim cries. “But I don’t- What if he- There is no one to-”
“Shh,” Dick soothes, rubbing the tense knots in Tim’s back. “Shh, it’s alright. I’ll go talk to him, okay? It’ll be fine.”
The clunk of footsteps on the stairs is all the warning Dick needs to move (reluctantly) away from the embrace. Seconds later, Peter Burke is coming into the apartment.
“Neal-” he starts, before very quickly cutting himself off. His eyes are fixed on the small, red eyed, shaky form of Tim. “Who is this?”
Tim only has a split second to decide on a name. He opens his mouth to say one, probably that he came up with on the spot, but Dick beats him to it. Dick needs to let Peter get close to the truth if the man is going to let Tim stick around, but Dick can’t just toss out their real names. Even with as far away from the celebrity scene as Peter stays, at least El will have heard of the Waynes. They need to use something else. Something that isn’t Wayne, but that is true about who they are to one another.
“This is Vinnie Malone.”
The surprise on Tim’s face makes complete sense, and his confusion is even about the right thing. Why share that name? Well, he is soon going to find out.
“Wh- uh. Neal? Why is Vinnie Malone in your apartment?”
“‘Cause,” Dick says with a crooked smile that is nothing like the smooth one Neal would use. “He’s my brother.”
“Th- that would make you-”
“Robbie Malone!” Dick chimes before giving a mock bow. “What can I do for ya?”
~
Peter hasn’t told anyone about the Neal-is-actually-Robbie-Malone thing yet.
It goes against everything he has been taught. But there is something about the admission that just… doesn’t sit right.
It was the expression on Vinnie Malone’s face. After the confusion (which made perfect sense), there was a brief moment before the boy’s face was smoothed into a calculated mask. A brief moment. A quick flash of emotion. Emotion that was… adoration?
With what Peter knows, that would make no sense for the Malone brothers. There must be something here that he isn’t seeing.
Something to do with the well-concealed, but not fully concealed, split lip Neal is now sporting.
“What happened?” Peter asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Bar fight,” Neal informs him with that crooked grin.
Sure. A bar fight. That would make sense for Robbie Malone.
But… is Neal really Robbie Malone? Around everyone else, he acts like nothing has changed. Like he is still Neal Caffery. And Peter has been around him for long enough, on enough undercover stints where Neal had to slip into a disguise, to know that he isn’t acting in this case. He is much more the non-violent conman than the murderous psychopath from Gotham.
So why claim to be Robbie?
Why pull on a violent mask right before showing up with injuries expertly disguised by make-up? Someone who is truly violent wouldn’t hide those ‘badges’.
Something isn’t right about all of this.
And Peter?
Peter is going to find out what.