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Tim has met Cass twice before. He'd liked her and thought she was easy on the eyes, but the girl is scary. She knows it, too, not the kind of scary with knuckle-cracking and brute-force intimidation, just the kind where you can tell by the way she stands that she'd mess you up and not think twice about it.
"Draper," Cass greets and Tim fights his urge to flee. "Meet Stephanie."
"Steph, actually," the other girls says. Steph's got a certain something, too; she's not like Cass, but Tim can see a hardness in her eyes that tells him not to mess with her either, and that's to say nothing about the way Cass and Steph are clearly holding hands. He wouldn't risk his life to get in between them. "So you're the famous Alvin Draper, huh?" Steph asks. She gives him a long once-over.
"I'm famous?" Tim asks.
"Oh yeah," Steph says. "Cass keeps going on and on about the Falcone job. She just can't shut up about you." Tim highly doubts that. "Can't blame her, though. You've got brains, obviously, with the whole computer genius thing, but you're pretty cute, too." Steph reaches out to rub her palm against the shaved head Tim's still getting used to, trailing her hand down the side of his face and over his shoulder to squeeze his bicep. "And hiding a little muscle!"
Next to Steph, Cass chuckles softly. Tim's eyes dart from side-to-side, nervous. He's not sure what to make of this.
"Do you like him?" Cass asks Steph. Her dark eyes are glittering.
"Oh yeah," Steph says. "I like him a lot. It's good I gotta leave right now because I can't wait to tell the Bossman about him."
+
"Got anything good for me, T?" Oracle's avatar fills an entire wall of Tim's bedroom. That's one of the coolest things about working for someone with solid financial backing -- the tech is out of this world, even if it's hidden most of the time so Tim's cover stays plausible. "We've really got to get you a codename."
"Got one now," Tim says. "Red Robin."
"From the song?" Oracle asks.
Tim smirks a little and doesn't answer, makes her think she got it in one. The real answer's way creepier, but there's no reason for Barbara to know how far back this obsession with Grayson goes. Let her think she just found a computer hacker with a particularly strong sense of right and wrong, not someone who knows all about The Flying Graysons and the nickname Grayson's mother gave him -- from his real mother, before Maroni got his hooks in him.
"I met two of Mr. Grayson's best girls," Tim says. "Nothing too crazy, just in an in-person thank you for a job well-done. The virus that took out Falcone's accounts is still wreaking havoc. Figure if I'm getting in good with a bad guy, it's okay to take out a rival bad guy in the process. I made an impression, O. The consulting work's about to go big time; I can feel it."
Oracle's electronic head doesn't smile, but Tim knows Babs and knows how happy she'll be with the progress. After all, she's got a personal beef in all this. "Good work, Red," Oracle says, trying on the nickname. "I'll check in soon."
"Not too soon," Tim reminds her. He has to be Alvin Draper, small-time computer thug now and he can't risk his cover. "Over and out," Tim says and Oracle blinks away, the wall in his dingy little one-bedroom just a wall again.
+
Tim microwaves a frozen dinner, one of the kinds made for too-big appetites, and eats it in front of the TV. He's not really hungry, but he knows he has to keep his strength up and the apple cobbler is pretty good. On the news, the reporter is live at the scene of one of Gotham's ten-billion warehouses and in the background two mooks are being handcuffed and led away. They cut to surveillance footage from earlier, a truck pulling away from the scene and a blonde girl grinning with her elbow resting on the window-frame. Tim's eyes widen and he leans forward to squint at the driver -- all he can make out is a shock of dark hair and a flash of teeth before the guy pulls into traffic flawlessly, despite the fact that the back of the truck is loaded with stolen explosives. Then the reporter is back, asking for any information about the identities of the man and woman who escaped the scene.
"Shit," Tim mutters. Yeah, he has information about their identities. He'd just seen Steph earlier today, and he guessed the reason she had to leave was just broadcast all over the evening news. The other one -- well, Tim would know Dick Grayson's face anywhere.
Tim gets up, leaving most of his dinner uneaten. He digs into the front pocket of his jeans and pulls out a flash drive, one that he's pretty sure even Barbara doesn't know about. He disconnects his computer from his network first just in case. Slipping the drive into the USB port makes Tim sigh in relief; he knows it's terrible and stupid, that reaction, getting off on technology like a heroin addict joneses for a needle under his skin.
But tech gives him a hiding place. He doesn't need to cover his walls in newspaper pieces and photographs; he doesn't need to tape up yellowing articles about The Flying Graysons coming to town. There's no tattered clipping about Maroni's new ward, generously rescued by Tony Zucco after his parents' ugly murder, right under the article about the latest allocation for The Thomas, Martha and Bruce Wayne Memorial Fund. Tim's got it all right in the palm of his hand, encrypted so tightly that only the best hackers could even get close to his obsession, and that's assuming anyone could physically get the drive off him first.
And Tim knows it's obsession. He just doesn't know which side that obsession puts him on.
Tim flips through scans -- a photograph of Dick and Tim when they met at the circus, back when they both had parents and Tim knew how to idolize normally. Grayson's academic achievements. Grayson's arrest for petty theft (the charges were dropped). The trial of George "Digger" Harkness for the murder of a husband and wife during an alleged Maroni mob hit taken out on the wrong people, and the teenage orphan the dead left behind. Maroni's untimely accidental death and the fortune left to Dick Grayson. Grayson at every socialite event after Maroni's death, reformed and handsome and oh-so-rich.
Tim flips right around to the beginning and starts again.
+
A message gets sent to him in person, and by an in-person message, Tim means there's a person hanging out on his fire escape. He pushes open the window and lets Steph into his room. He says a silent prayer that Barbara doesn't decide to show up with an urgent message for him, though so far she's been good about timing.
"So this is where the magic happens," Steph says, turning in a slow circle near the foot of his bed.
"Sure, if by magic you mean breaking into every security system from here to Tokyo."
Steph gives him a coy over-the-shoulder look and licks her lips. "Of course. What else could I possibly mean?" She's not much older than Tim, and maybe in another life they could have gotten some ice cream and seen a movie together, some life that neither of them has ever been nice enough to earn. In this one, Cass is crawling through Tim's window, too, silent as a cat and not making herself known until she puts her hand on Tim's shoulder. He jumps.
"Hello, Draper," Cass says into his ear.
"Hey, Cass," Tim says. Her hand stays on Tim's shoulder as Steph takes two steps closer to him and rubs her fingers over Cass's. "To what do I owe the honor?"
"The boss and I got to talking yesterday," Steph says. "About you."
"Yeah, I saw you two on the six o'clock n-- ah." Tim's words get caught as Cass nuzzles the side of his throat.
"He wants to take you on full time," Steph says. She tilts her head to one side and reaches out to brush her thumb against the side of his cheek. "He wants us to convince you any way we can. Are you up for that?"
"You're probationary," Cass says into Tim's ear, right before she bites down on it. Tim has lost all ability to move or speak or think. "And it's on Stephanie's and my word." The so don't mess it up is heavily implied.
"Boss wants to meet you, too," Steph says. She presses her palm flat against his chest. "So you in?"
"Yeah," Tim says, finding his voice. "I'm in."
+
That night, Tim can't really process what's happened to him, but he sends Oracle a message, routing it through a series of secure networks and making it look like it originated from fifteen people who have never met Tim Drake or Alvin Draper.
Someone else's thoughts are mine full-time. Cutting off all contact for the foreseeable future. Promise I'll be careful. We'll stop him, don't you worry.
-- RR, bob-bob-bobbin' along along.
+
Steph and Cass each grab one of Tim's -- Alvin's -- hands and tug him up an elaborate staircase. This is it, the moment Tim's thought about for over ten years. He's prepared.
Okay, he's not. But he lets them drag him along.
They both push him into an office, and when Tim looks behind him, Steph and Cass both have their eyes widened as they smile sweetly at him. They probably think it makes them look innocent, but Tim knows better. They made sure of that.
"Mr. Draper?" Dick Grayson walks around a desk and offers his hand. He's dressed in an expensive suit, smiling easily and meeting Tim's eyes. Tim can feel the flash drive of information pressed against his thigh like a brand. "Well," Grayson says, his eyes sparkling as he shakes Tim's hand. "I can see Cassandra and Stephanie weren't exaggerating about you. Welcome to the family."