Chapter Text
Dick woke up with a groan. His pulled his arms over his head, twisting to the side until he felt his back pop. He’d gone too hard at the gym yesterday.
He refused to let his more night-based skills dull too harshly while undercover and he’d just found a gym in his radius that had a acrobatics section. He’d been a little over-excited and maybe forgotten to do a warmup.
A fist pounded on the door to his flat. He groaned again.
“It’s open Peter!” He called out, while pulling himself into a seated position. Peter walked in, looked around before spotting Dick in bed. A frown settled quickly onto his face.
“Neal, why aren’t you up? We have to be at Brockham’s in thirty minutes.” Dick groaned a third time.
“That’s on Wednesday.”
“It is Wednesday.”
“Shit, gimme ten minutes.” Dick collected his suit from his closet and went to shower and dress in the washroom, ignoring the raised brow Peter had sent him on his way by.
He spent half his focus getting back into his Neal headspace. Peter would assume he overslept and might let it go if Dick got his shit together now. Ten minutes later, he walked out of the washroom ready to go, Caffrey hat, and persona, already in place.
Peter had made himself at home at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and Neal’s newspaper. Dick crossed to the kitchen, about to pour himself a cup of coffee.
“No time Neal, we gotta go.” Peter started folding up the paper. Dick rolled his eyes and snagged Peter’s cup and drank the remaining coffee. “Hey!” Peter snatched the cup back, too late to save any.
“No time Peter, we gotta go.” Dick sent Peter a signature Caffrey smile as he walked backwards to the door. Peter sighed, trying to hide a small smile. They’d been working together for two years now, Peter was starting to find Neal’s smaller rebellions endearing instead of suspicious.
Soon they were off. Brockham’s was Brockham Bank, they were hired to do a security check on the vaults. Dick loved when a bank or museum requested a security check.
Peter had started trusting him with them about a year ago, letting him roam off anklet during those times. The checks reminded Dick of before, when he was doing recon for his team, or when he snuck out with Selina.
Selina was the only person from his past life who knew where he was, she’d helped him with the new identity, had gone on a lot of his first heists. Before he moved to New York and met Mozzie, and Kate, before Adler.
Dick shook off his past, he needed his head in the game. If he fumbled a security check then people would stop requesting them and he’d end up trapped at his desk again.
Peter stopped the car a block away from the bank.
“You remember how this goes, you have one hour to check back in with me before the FBI assumes you’ve gone rogue.”
“Understood.” Dick said in a half-joking tone, Neal doesn’t take to orders well. He lifted his foot for Peter to reach his anklet, shaking dirt onto the centre console.
Peter pursed his lips, irritation deepening the creases by his mouth. He unlocked the anklet, dropping it into the cup holder beside him.
“Okay, good luck.” Dick was already out of the car.
“I don’t need luck.” He slammed the door shut and started walking towards the target. He managed to grab Peter’s briefcase while the man was distracted unlocking the anklet. Dick smirked as he swung the case beside him, knowing it was now in Peter’s line of sight.
He started walking without the skip in his step as he approached the bank doors, leaning into his own mannerisms rather than Neal’s. He strolled into the bank with his shoulders back and head held high. He walked up to a free teller.
“Hi, my name is Nick Halden, I’m here for an interview with Dylan Keene?” The teller looked him up and down.
“Sure, he’s not in yet.” She looked around, all the seating in the lobby was filling up.
“I can wait over by his office?” He smiled at her. She looked around the lobby again.
“Yeah, yes, I’m sure that’s fine.” She waved him down a corridor behind the row of desks. Dick found the door marked ‘Dylan Keene’ and found it unlocked. He slipped inside. He started searching the man’s desk and cabinets for supplies.
He located a spare ID card labelled ‘temp’ where a name should be. Next, he sat down in front of the manager’s computer, it was password locked. He looked over the man’s desk, eye catching on a framed photo of the man on his wedding day.
Dick popped open the frame, looking at the back of the photo. ‘Dylan & Denise’. He punched ‘Denise’ into the keys, it flashed red. He thought for a moment before trying again with the first ‘e’ as a ‘3’, the computer unlocked.
He searched through the computer’s note taking app, and there it was. The vault code typed out. Dick rolled his eyes as he shut down the computer and replaced the photo frame.
He left the office, traveling further down the hallway, until he found a washroom. He did a sweep to ensure it was empty, then he waited by the door, keeping it cracked with his foot.
Soon, a man was walking down the hall whistling a tune, Dick poked his head out and saw the man entering Mr. Keene’s office. Dick waited a minute then walked back to the teller desks. He flashed the teller he’d spoken to a smile and waved the ID card at her, she shot him a thumbs up and a grin before returning to her customer.
He thought back to the bank layout blueprints he’d been given last week. The vault entrance was located across the building and down a few steps. There was no guard assigned specifically to the entrance, Dick simply swiped through with the temp ID and entered the vault combination.
He spent five minutes in the vault itself, the older dye packs the bank was using were insanely easy to spot. Dick filled Peter’s briefcase with cash, only thing left to do was rendezvous with Peter outside.
Dick locked up the vault behind him, at the top of the steps a guard was turning to face him. Dick scrunched his brow, and started scanning the room.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the guard approach, when the guard got closer, her turned, pretending to notice him.
“Oh good!” Dick leaned in to read the man’s name tag. “Bernard, I’m so turned around. It’s my first day and Mr. Keene said there were lockers down a hallway at the side of the building.”
“Where’s your ID?”
“Here.” Dick handed him the temp card. The man raised a brow at it. Dick laughed. “Sorry, that’s not helpful is it, I’m Nick Halden.” He lifted a hand to shake. The guard took it.
“Make sure they give you a proper ID before you leave. I’ll walk you to the lockers.” Dick nodded at the man’s words.
“Thanks.” They walked in silence to a break/locker room. Dick gave him another ‘thanks’ as the man dismissed himself. Dick waited 30 seconds then left the room, at the end of this hallway was an emergency exit.
Dick pushed open the door, setting off an alarm, then walked back through the bank and left out the front door with fleeing patrons.
He calmly walked back to Peter’s car, where the man was waiting, leaned against the hood.
“How much did you get?”
“One mil, all in hundreds, no dye packs.” Agents Jones and Blake approached the pair, Jones let out a impressed whistle.
“One million for less than an hour of work.”
“Careful Jones, you’re starting to sound like Caffrey.” Peter passed Jones the briefcase, to return to the bank. “Alright Neal, let’s get to the office, you have a report to write up.”
“You guys really know how to take the joy out of a heist.” Dick sighed as he climbed into Peter’s car.
It took Dick two hours to write up a detailed report on the bank’s security flaws. Well, it took him 45 minutes interspersed between bothering Diana, and refilling his coffee.
Not that she was truly bothered, she acted more annoyed when Peter was watching so she could blame Neal as a distractor. He had just wheeled his chair back over to needle her about a date she went on last night when Peter stepped out of his office and gave him the two-finger summoning wave.
He pushed his chair back to his desk, grabbing the report then hurrying up to Peter’s office.
“Hey, report’s done.” Peter nodded and tapped his desk, Dick dropped the file down. Peter pushed it slightly to the side, still looking up at Dick, his mouth pressed into a line. “Whatever you think I did, I can explain.” Dick started, playing up Neal’s playful defensive nature.
“El wants you to come over for lunch.” Dick let out an exaggerated sigh of relief.
“Sounds lovely, why is your face all scrunched then?” Peter looked offended.
“My face isn’t scrunched.” Dick shrugged his shoulders, not commenting. “It’s this new event I guess, she’s doing a gala in Gotham.”
“Gotham or Gotham Heights?”
“That’s… Is that not the same thing?” Dick shook his head.
“I wouldn’t be as worried if it’s in Gotham Heights, it’s the rich neighbourhood.” Neal wiggled his eyebrows.
“Do I wanna know why you know where the rich Gothamites are?”
“No.” Dick shook his head emphatically with a grin pasted on his face. Peter raised a brow. “Fine. Allegedly, Nick Halden participated in the not so legal sale of a few paintings”
“So you have some connections in Gotham, are any of them active.”
“Uhh,” Dick waved his hand in a so-so motion, “not too many of them would react well to me reappearing.” That part was true, Dick had left for a reason, people in Gotham wouldn’t be happy to see him again.
“Guess I’ll add that to your file.” Dick rolled his eyes.
“Always the FBI agent.” Peter looked slightly chastised.
“Right, well, Diana has a stack of claims, help her sort through them until lunch.” Dick did a sloppy one-finger salute.
“Sure thing boss.” He lowered his voice to mimic one of the rogue’s henchmen. He returned to his desk, to grab his chair and drag it to Diana.
“Looks like I get to help you.” Dick said in a sing-song voice, grabbing a file from the stack beside her.
“I don’t think he meant you should work at my desk.”
“He didn’t specify.” Dick beamed the signature Caffrey grin. “Now, tell me about date night.” Diana glared, slowly handing him a pen for his paperwork. Dick sighed and cracked open his file.
He had just started on his third file when he noted Peter leaving his office. Dick kept his head down, pretending to read until Peter cleared his throat form above him. He looked up, wide eyed. He puffed out a breath.
“Peter, jeez, stop sneaking around, gonna give me a heart attack.”
“I wasn’t sneaking- never mind, just, it’s lunch, come on.” Dick smirked at Diana while returning her pen. Peter was already at the elevators. Dick did a little jog step to catch up.
“What’s El serving up?”
“Uh.”
“You don’t remember, do you?” Peter shifted at Dick’s question before deflating.
“No, she said a lot of it in French.” Dick laughed.
“French is a beautiful language.” Dick sighed, French was his fourth, no third fluent language. He liked how it flowed.
“Of course Neal Caffrey loves a romance language.” Dick rolled his eyes before ushering Peter from the elevator to the car park.
“Hurry up, I’m excited for lunch.” The drive felt slow, Peter managed to find a radio station that played old baseball games.
It was enough to have to listen to one on a stakeout, Dick didn’t need to hear them every time he got into Peter’s car. As soon as Peter put the car in park, Dick was out the door and rushing to the house. He gave a knock before letting himself in.
“El? I heard you have some actually decent food for lunch.” He heard a laugh from the kitchen. He followed the sound to El setting the table, he greeted her with a kiss on each cheek. “Marvellous. I swear Peter was talking about a hot dog cart this morning.” Dick shivered while looking disgusted. El laughed again.
“Good to see you, Neal.” El had a warm smile, and easy demeanour that first reminded Dick of Alfred, causing him to like the woman instantly. Peter, on the other hand, Dick had been wary of, he was quite similar to…
“Hi hon.” Peter greeted Elizabeth when he walked into the room. He looked overwhelmed by all the food she had stacked in the kitchen. She followed his gaze.
“I know, the caterers sent over a lot.”
“Then we better get started.” Dick suggested, quirking a brow at Peter, almost in a challenge. Peter usually shied away from sampling for events with El, he didn’t have the most refined palate.
Honestly, neither did Dick, but Neal did. Dick often compared whatever dish he was sampling to something Alfred would have made, if it compares then he gushes. Alfred does have a refined palate. They dug in, El had them write down a score for each food they tried.
“So, who’s gala is it?” Dick asked between bites. Not the Waynes, please.
“The Elliot family is hosting a fund raiser, it’s in Gotham Heights.”
“Neal says that Gotham Heights is a safer part of the city.” Peter chimed in.
“That’s good hon.” El and Dick shared a look, Peter was very protective of El.
“Anyone you hoping to meet there, I hear the Gotham scene is always in need of new event planners.” Dick asked, trying to steer the conversation to the Waynes. He rarely looked them up online, never wanted any searches to come back to himself.
When an agent left their computer unlocked or he had the chance to go to the libraries outside of he radius then he would do a quick search on his brothers, make sure they were okay.
Last he heard, Jason, or rather the Red Hood, was working with the bats again, Tim was running Wayne Enterprises, travelling between Gotham and New York offices, and Damien was doing well in school. Or at least Dick assumed he was doing well by the list of awards he’d earned for math, science, fencing, and art from various extracurricular venues. Hopefully he had made a few friends.
Most of the time Dick tried to ignore the news circulating gossip mags, there was speculation about Richie, who’d gone on a world tour and hadn’t been seen in Gotham since. Some said he died on the trip, others that he’d settled down in a European village and simply forgot to send word home.
Any other news was about Him. It would all be fake anyway, the same airhead character that Dick had based Richie on. So maybe he was fishing for some insider knowledge that Elizabeth might have. If she had spoken to the Elliots in person then she would have gone to Gotham, and might know the gossip one or two people removed instead of pumped through unreliable industry reporters.
“I’m looking forward to meeting a lot of people honestly, you’re right that there’s an opening. I’m hoping that if I can shake hands with a few people then I might get calls from them later on.”
“I’ve heard the Wayne family throws a lot of galas.” Dick did it, brought up the name. It was risky to have El search them out, but Dick was too curious.
“I think they’re on my list, I’ll keep an eye out, thanks Neal.”
“No problem.” Peter cleared his throat, squinting briefly at Dick.
“I think we should probably get back to work.” Peter said with a sigh.
The trip back to the office felt shorter, Dick was stuck in thought. He knew his brothers would be safe, they weren’t raised the same way as him, they were sons, not wards.
And, Jason was there again, he knew a fuller extent of B’s darkness, and he may not be Tim or Dami’s biggest fan but he wouldn’t let B do anything to them. Not after he’d gotten away from his own father.
But even so, Dick worried about them. If B turned on them like how he turned on Dick… Dick wanted to be in the know, or as close as he could get without tripping any bat-alerts.
Dick had stopped at Diana’s desk to grab a stack of files, but returned to his desk to complete the work. He pretended not to notice the look Diana and Jones shared about his chosen solitude.
That night Dick waved Peter off when he was offered a ride home. He wanted to walk it. It was a cool night, his suit offering just enough warmth. His walk wasn’t too long, besides, walking in a city always felt shorter to Dick. There was always so much to look at, he liked big cities, the chaos reminded him of the circus. Of home.
Dick sighed at himself, if he was going to be sentimental then he would go all the way. He stopped at a phone booth, dialled a number by heart.
“Kitten.”
“Hi Cat.”
“Do you need another lawyer?” Dick laughed, the last time he’d called her was when he’d gone to prison. Although he’d only been actually locked away for a fraction of the time the FBI believed him to be there. Regular prisons didn’t have a Gotham-raised mindset.
“No, Cat, I just… wanted to call.” She almost purred.
“That is adorable, my little kitten misses me.”
“Well, yes actually, are you in New York soon?”
“As a matter of fact, I should be in a few weeks, we should see a show!”
“If it’s inside my radius.”
“Right,” she drawled, “that thing with the F- B- I-.” Her distaste poured through the phone. “I thought I taught you better than to get caught.”
“You did, I just needed a new chapter.”
“Yes, yes, solving crimes, fighting bad guys, it’s in your blood, blah, blah, blah.” Dick laughed.
“Something like that.”
“Sorry darling, I’ve got to run, I’ll see you soon.” Dick could hear distant yelling before the line went dead. Dick was in better spirits.
Selina had been on again off again with B through Dick’s Robin years, she had tended to look out for him during that time. And recently they’d gotten close. Dick viewed Selina almost as a mother figure, which she tended to encourage.
She wasn’t a fan of most kids, but being raised in a circus meant that Dick wasn’t exactly normal. Normal kids didn’t want to crime fight in tiny pants.
After what happened, when his brothers hated him, when Alfred couldn’t look him in the eye, Selina was there. Her morals were… flexible. She helped him figure out how to just be. Without external pressures.
She had taught him how to use his skills for slightly more nefarious purposes. While he mostly conned or stole from those who deserved it, it didn’t mean that it was the right thing to do. It meant he was being selfish.
So he caught the FBI’s eye, left a little trail for Peter. Half of what happened with Adler had been staged. Dick was working with Adler from the start. At the end of their con, Adler was supposed to make off with his personal account, only making it look like he took the rest. Then, the money would be returned to the investors over the next year.
But the man managed to actually drain the investor account. So, after Dick had gotten ‘caught’ and sent to prison, he snuck out, and tracked Adler down.
Dick only spent the last year of his four-year sentence in the prison. Dick wasn’t overly disappointed in the justice system, he’d seen how the rogues had done it for years so he knew a few extra tricks.
A few prisoners had noticed his absence, but Dick was able to pay them off to stay quiet. The year in prison wasn’t anything close to pleasant but he’d needed to log time before he appealed to Peter, it was peaceful in comparison to his time in Spyral.
Besides B would never look for Dick in a list on convicts, it was good cover.
Dick made it home, he had started up the stairs when June called out to him from the sitting room.
“Neal, darling, is that you?” He made his way to the sitting room, he leaned on the doorway. June was on the sofa with a book. She was wearing a dress that was a bit too black-tie for just around the house, she was likely on her way to or from a party.
“You look radiant this evening.”
“Hush, you charmer, I had an early dinner with some old friends.” He crossed the room to greet her properly with a kiss on the cheek before sitting down on the sofa across from her.
“And how was the dinner?”
“Good company, good food, bad music,” she frowned at the thought before brightening, “play me something?”
“Of course.” He went to the piano, knocking back the cover, and begun to play. He played the few songs he knew without sheet music, the last one he learned from a performer at Haly’s, the tune more whimsical.
“That is proper music, the venue boasted proper attire then played the radio from tinny speakers.” Dick smiled in her direction.
“Oh, Cat said she’d try to drop in while in New York in a few weeks.” June and Dick had met by chance, only discovering they both knew Selina months later.
June sent him a sad smile. “That’s wonderful, I haven’t seen her in quite a few years, and I’m sure you’ve been missing her.”
“Quite a bit.” June walked over to him, and gripped his hand, giving it a squeeze before pulling away.
“Some of us are no longer young, I’m heading off to bed, you better join me for dinner some time this week.” Dick smiled.
“Of course.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek in farewell before retiring to his flat. Dick made himself a tea, setting it beside his laptop on the coffee table. He typed a quick search for the Elliot gala, he hadn’t asked El when it was. It was later this week, less than seven days until his two worlds collided.