Chapter Text
“So, Timothy,” the interviewer says, flipping through his notes. “We’ve gone over some of your future projects, and your plans for DI internationally and in the US, but let’s hear a little more about you.”
It’s Tuesday night, and Tim finds himself sitting on a comfortable red chair, chatting with the interviewer in front of him. He’s doing a live interview for the 11 PM late night show airing on the GTV channel. He knows that by tomorrow morning, he’ll be seeing clips and quotes from it on social media, his frozen easygoing smile as the thumbnail of a few articles and videos.
Tim tilts his head, thinking. “There’s not much to say, really. I wake up, go to work, I like Zesti soda…” The sit-in audience laughs, and Tim shoots them a bright smile.
The interviewer shares a smile with them as well. “You’re very different from other CEOs, I mean. You have a much more… active presence with both your employees and the media. It’s hard to find – if there even is – another CEO taking as much time to sit down for late night shows. It’s not the usual crowd they’ll pick.” Tim nods, agreeing with the interviewer. “Why the departure from the norm?”
Tim shrugs, readjusting himself in his seat to seem nonchalant. “My PR manager would tell me to say something about transparency… Which– yeah, it’s true and important, but to be honest?” He pauses, and the interviewer nods at him as encouragement, leaning in to better hear the answer. “I forget CEOs are supposed to be untouchable and aloof. I’ve basically grown up on Twitter, and I’m used to posting anything and everything that goes through my mind.”
The audience laughs again.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Tim continues, “there is some curating. I’ve been given a few talks about not posting pictures of rats on the subway, but I usually forget my account is available to the public.” Tim shrugs. “My account was created when I was a much less important public figure and focused more on entertainment, so I’ve always had a more casual approach. I prefer it this way, even if PR doesn’t,” he adds lightly. The audience is eating out of his hand at this point, almost an hour into the recording.
“Right,” the interviewer agrees. “You used to be a gymnastics champion.”
“The Athlete’s Council is much less strict about what gets posted on my account than my PR team,” Tim says with a conspiratorial smile, as though he were telling a secret.
“Is there any chance we’ll be seeing you at nationals in between business deals now that your wrist injury has healed?” the interviewer jokes, and Tim forces a smile over the grimace that threatens to show.
“No, I don’t think I have quite enough time to compete,” his smile turns wistful, and the audience sighs in disappointment. “I still practice, but I’ve accepted my retirement. I don’t think the board would appreciate me taking meetings on a tumbling mat.” He snorts at the image.
Fortunately, the interviewer steers the conversation back to PR-approved topics, and the live stream concludes only a few questions later. “Alright, well thank you for your time, Timothy. It’s been a pleasure to have you on the show,” the interviewer concludes after checking his watch.
“Thank you for having me,” Tim answers, shaking the man’s hand as he gets up. He waves goodbye to the crowd, who appload him as he walks off the stage. His cheeks hurt from smiling so much.
The moment he steps off stage, Tam is at his side, escorting him to the guest suite in the backstage area as he loosens his tie and ruffles his hair into his normal style. “You’re already trending on twitter,” she tells him, the app open on her handheld tablet.
Tim glances at the tweets and grimaces. The timeline is filled with his past gymnastics career instead of DI related posts. “Be honest, is Priya going to kill me?” He’d gone just enough off-script that he knows Priya, head of communications and PR, would get on his case.
“She better not,” Tam scoffs. “You have an early meeting tomorrow morning with investors.”
He makes a face, though he plasters an innocent look when Tam turns to scold him. “Any good memes yet?” he asks lightly, changing the subject.
Tam narrows her eyes at him, knowing that he’s trying to distract her. “#FreeTimmy is trending on Twitter again,” she tells him. The hashtag had gained popularity three months ago when Tim had had his Twitter account confiscated from him by Priya after tweeting a list of the top ten chill spots in Gotham, number one having been the gargoyle on top of the Gotham Basilica near the harbor. People had started badly editing his old gymnastic competition tapes to make it seem as though he were backflipping across the Gotham skyline, much to his amusement and to Priya’s dismay.
She’d been so mad about it he’d lost his twitter privileges. Her face had been an interesting shade of purple when she’d stormed into his office to tell him.
He lets out a genuine smile for the first time that night at the memory.
“In other words, Priya’s going to kill me, bring me back to life to yell at me, and then kill me again,” he says drily, taking the tablet from Tam’s hands. He sits down on a swivelling chair in the guest suite backstage, absentmindedly thanking Tam as she passes him a makeup wipe. He places the tablet in front of him on the table of the vanity in the suite and wipes the light makeup off from his face.
Tam stands behind his shoulder, watching impassively. Her grim face tells him all he needs to know about Priya’s feelings about the interview. He sighs, and his face in the mirror looks about as exhausted as he feels, concealer no longer hiding away the dark eyebags he sports.
He throws the now-tan wipe in the trash and gets up from his seat, handing Tam her tablet back. He wants nothing more than to jump into his bed and sleep for the next twelve hours.
Instead, he spends the next twenty minutes speaking to the producer and thanking the interviewer again before managing to make his escape with Tam. They chat quietly in the backseat of the car, Tim’s driver knowing to drop Tam off first at her apartment before driving Tim to his own residence. Tim watches as Tam makes it safely to her door, nodding to the building’s security through the car window.
He makes it home soon after, the Gotham streets empty of other drivers at this time.
When he enters his apartment, it’s empty and dark. He doesn’t bother to turn on the lights before heading to bed, simply taking off his shoes and dropping his keys on the kitchen island. He stumbles into bed, barely taking the time to strip himself of his clothes. He keeps his mind carefully blank as he waits for sleep to claim him.
–
At only 19, Tim is one of the youngest CEOs in the world. He’s certainly the youngest CEO of a fortune 200 company.
Over a year ago, a freshly eighteen-year-old Tim Drake had taken over his own company, exposing the CEO, Phil Marin, for embezzlement, tax evasion and insider trading. Poor Phil had been sentenced to over twenty years in prison with the case Tim had mounted against him. It’s a shame he hadn’t covered his tracks better.
The world had watched in shock as Tim had wrested his parents’ company from the old CEO’s – his legal guardian’s – grasp and taken up the position of CEO within twelve hours of his turning eighteen. He’d become the media’s darling in an instant, every paper in the country and beyond trying to gain information on the young Timothy Jackson Drake, the true heir to Drake Industries and youngest eligible millionaire this side of the planet.
He’s truly his parents’ son, the media claimed, showing pictures of the vicious smile he’d stolen from his mother.
Ambitious like his father, they preached as Timothy saved DI from collapse. Clever like his mother, they wrote as Timothy bought up small seemingly unprofitable industries and made them bloom under his company’s care, bringing DI’s stocks back to their former glory within a year. A true son of Gotham, they said as Timothy developed his offices in the city and went above and beyond to pay his workers fair wages. Selfless, they called him as Timothy reduced his own salary to ensure DI would survive these changes, sacrificing his time and dreams to keep the company afloat. Tragic, they all but wrote in every article, unable to keep themselves from rehashing his parents’ deaths and his own tragic life.
It all paid off, of course, with Timothy now being the proud CEO of a fortune 200 company that is rapidly rising in the ranks well before the two-year mark of his ascension to power. The company stocks are high, his workers are happy and his products are selling.
There’s something missing, Tim’s mind whispers.
Drake Industries, once having only specialized in the production of medical equipment and collaborated with international aid organizations, has spread its scope of production to include technology, biotech, alternative energy, electronics, and automobiles.
You have everything you ever wanted, yet you still feel hollow.
The company is in good standing internationally, beloved for its supplying of materials to the Red Cross and other international aid organizations. Janet would have liked that.
You find it boring.
His company, the one he had to practically rebuild, is revered for its treatment of workers, which is rivaled only by Wayne Enterprises.
You want more.
But that’s all Timothy. Everyone loves Timothy.
You want it all.
No one is left to love Tim.
You chose your path.
Tim rubs his eyes, focusing on the marketing department’s report Tam had given him that morning after his meeting with the investors. He sighs as he reads their complaint about the logistics department. A twinning document on the corner of his desk made by the logistics department sits all but innocently in his peripheral vision. He can already feel a headache forming.
He presses the intercom button on the corner of his desk. “Tam,” he begins, “would you mind setting up a meeting with Priya from marketing and Arban from logistics this week?” He knows Tam’s heard him when he sees her freeze in her seat on the other side of his office’s window. “In the early afternoon, preferably,” he adds, remembering the last time the marketing and logistics departments had tried to start a civil war. He just hopes the sales department stays out of it this time. She reaches a hand forward to hesitantly press her own intercom button.
“Should I cancel any other appointments after that?” she asks.
“Yes, Tam,” he answers her, “and make sure security is nearby.” His voice does not shake when he makes that demand. His mind does not flash with the events of the last marketing-logistics war like a terrible vietnam war movie. He stays calm. He stays collected. Cool as a cucumber, he tells himself.
He picks up the next document for review. He sees “sales department” at the top and knows his good week is going down the drain. He presses the intercom button again. “Tam…” he begins, trying to keep the dread out of his voice. His words fail him.
“Is it the sales department?” she asks softly, and Tim can hear the desperation in her voice for him to tell her she’s wrong. He can’t.
“...yeah,” he says in a defeated voice. He should have known Pam would be too nosy to stay out of it.
“I’ll have Pam join the meeting, then.” He can hear Tam’s fingers tapping on her keyboard as she sets up the meeting, the soft clack clack getting picked up by the intercom microphone.
“Thanks,” he says miserably. He lays his head with a soft thunk on his desk. He wonders if all of the DI offices are like this, or if it’s just Gotham. It feels like he’s corralling children. Angry children. Angry children who will stop at nothing to impale each other with shitty plastic forks they stole from the cafeteria. The cafeteria doesn’t even offer plastic utensils anymore, having switched to reusable cutlery fourteen months ago. Where do they even get them?
He thinks about calling Simon from HR to coordinate some sort of espionage force. By all means, he should, Simon being the one who’s supposed to oversee disputes like this. He owes it to Tim for making him deal with the mess. Tim hesitates to pick up his phone, hand hovering over the numbered buttons.
He pulls his hand back. Tim’s too curious to see what kind of weapon Pam will be able to fashion from the office supplies in the meeting room to pass up the opportunity to see the legendary fight go down. The stapler lance had been truly enlightening last time.
Maybe he should move Pam’s offices closer to the RnD department’s where her innovations could inspire the engineers. He thinks about it for a moment, juggling with ideas for the new layout of the offices. While Pam likes her view on Robinson Park, a downgrade wouldn’t be too shocking after what she pulled with the product launch last month. She’ll be upset, but she'll live. Most importantly, she’ll be further away from the chaos of the marketing-logistics quadrant.
Unfortunately for Tim, Priya and Arban are in too high a social position in the company for him to move them apart from one another. The marketing and logistics departments have a cult-like following for their leaders, and riots will break out if Tim takes away their opportunity to defeat the other department in battle. He needs them to stay in competition anyway: their departments’ efficiency had been boosted by as much as 300% within a week of their offices being relocated next to one another. Civil war is a small price to pay in exchange for the achievement of Tim’s goals of corporate takeovers.
He finishes reading the sales department’s report and places it in a stack with the other two related documents. Checking his calendar, he notes that Tam was able to schedule a meeting with them in two days. Goodbye, Friday afternoon.
With that shelved for later, Tim pulls the last pile of paperwork on his desk in front of him.
Quarterly performance reports. Yay.
He reads through them carefully, taking notes as he does for his next meeting with Arban and Lixue from finance. Maybe things are looking up for him after all, he thinks as he makes his way through the boring paperwork. With figures like these, Tim will easily be able to convince the board to let him make another move to undermine Wayne Enterprises.
Across from Tim, on the other side of Robinson Park, Wayne Tower shines in the sun. A sharp grin graces Tim’s face as he imagines its imminent collapse. The media is right to call him ambitious and clever, but it fails to see how petty he is. Tim is going to take over Wayne Enterprises, and he’ll stop at nothing to do so. It’s his birthright, after all.