Chapter Text
Steph has to argue with Bruce about it but eventually she convinces him to let her go out on patrol alone.
This is important because Steph had forgotten exactly one—ONE!—crucial fact about her date with Tim.
She had planned her escape.
Called herself out for the day.
Even had the fancy car getaway driver in the form of an oblivious Tim.
Now if only she hadn’t left her backpack in the getaway driver’s car.
Damian gives her a look just before he heads out with Batman. All narrowed eyes and suspicion.
Steph sticks her tongue out at him in return.
But that was then, this is now. And now, Steph has to sneak into the Drake Penthouse to steal her backpack back from his car.
She slips through the roof entrance door silently, closing it behind her and moving down the staircase.
When she peeks out of the door to the penthouse hallway, she is disappointed to see the light from the study still on. Darn it, does the guy never sleep!?
Slowly she creeps forward through the dim light towards the regular entrance, spotting a set of keys sitting on a small table be the private elevator. Bingo.
She double checks the hallway,
Clear.
Steph pulls them off the table silently, and holds them tightly as she goes back to the stairs, slinking down to the parking garage and- which one was his again?
Some fancy black thing. A Lexus?
That narrowed things down exactly zero percent.
Nonetheless, she goes row by row, pressing the button until lights lit up on one of the cars.
Steph scurries forward, pressing her face against the glass to see through the tint.
There it was. In all its sparkly purple glory.
Her backpack.
She quickly removes it from the backseat, locks the door behind her, and scuttles back to the staircase. She drops her bag on the steps to make it easier, already regretting the stair count, before rushing back inside to put the keys back where she found them.
Except… as she gently settles the keys onto the table, she can hear Tim’s voice just around the corner. Evidently not in his study anymore.
“…. finish this deal, Mark.” He snapped.
Spoiler gets as close to the corner as she can, using a reflection to spot Tim leaning back against a kitchen counter with his phone to his ear.
“I don’t care what you have to do. If they’re asking for more, get rid of them, find a new manufacturer for less. We can sell this for hundreds of what it’s worth. My parents did not build Drake Industries to become the premiere forefront of the medical industry by giving in to demands-“
Spoiler grits her teeth, catching the reflection of light from the hallway behind her. The study light was still on. Her feet turn mindlessly.
She glances back over her shoulder, Tim still had the phone pressed to his ear, currently near the fridge…
She had time. She was here. She couldn’t just let it slip by her, even if Tim wasn’t as bad as his parents…
She could find proof, that he wasn’t supporting it, wasn’t a part of it, something.
Stephanie rifles through the papers spread out on the desk at top speed, throwing a harried glance at the door every few seconds.
Nothing. Nothing- wait.
Spoiler slides the paper free of the stack, eyes scanning closely. This was…
She looks at the door again, feeling like she could see directly through the walls at the teenager in the kitchen.
This was price gouging. Tim was making a deal with a company who was price gouging their products. Products designed to be low cost and available.
Spoiler scans the document closer, then the one under it, and another, and another… she glanced at the door, sound no longer trickling through it.
Spoiler slides the papers back to their places, as close as she could remember, then flung herself out of the door, entering a dark closet just across from it as footsteps came around the corner.
She peeks out, closet door cracked as much as she dares, and there was Tim, walking down the hallway with fingers texting away on his phone.
He sits back down at the study, continuing to type and scroll for a bit more before he reattached himself to his computer screens.
The shifted papers go unnoticed in front of him.
Spoiler breathes a silent sigh of relief and creeps out of the apartment.
She grabs her backpack from the stairwell, stashing it on a roof near her bike so she could grab it again later.
But that night, every time she throws out her grapple, every time she lands a punch on some thug…
Steph can’t help but see Tim’s signature at the bottom of those papers.
Not his parents. Not some nameless board member.
Tim’s.
What if Steph was wrong about him?
—
Tim flicks through the approved paparazzi photos he’d hired as he sips his protein smoothie the next morning. Some were decent, the others less so, with only a few truly worth it.
He’d send them to his mother for a final check of course, not mentioning the few he’d had to pay off to get rid of Stephanie’s reaction to her first plate.
The man had tried to frame it as displeasure with the date overall.
No, they had to look like a good couple, happy. Happy enough that Stephanie wouldn’t end anything before the next gala at the end of the month.
Hopefully she’d be willing to accept another date, despite the last one ending rather tensely.
Besides, he really should have known that she would know what to order at a place like that. Even Batman’s teaching has to fail somewhere.
Though he would think that she would have picked up the class etiquette sometime since being adopted by the Waynes.
Whatever. It didn’t matter.
Tim had a job to do, and he was going to do it. One way or another.
He finishes attaching the email files for his parents and zones back into the rest of his inbox.
Board meeting.
Finance meeting.
Planning meeting.
Press meeting, budget meeting, ad meeting-
Really it was endless chaos.
Still, it was chaos that he knew how to control.
Tim smiles as he starts a new draft.