Fic: I ♥ Tim Drake: #002
Word Count: ~1,270
Characters: Wee!Tim Drake, Ms. Mac, (Jack and Janet Drake)
“Tim! Honey!” Ms. Mac’s shrill voice echoed down the cellar stairs. ”Come up here, sweetheart!”
The seven-year-old knows that the housekeeper never comes down here; that she doesn’t like the smell of the chemicals or the fact that, occasionally a waterbug will find its way down there. But Tim closes the envelope on the light-sensitive paper and puts it away. He uses his fingers to grab to corner of the paper that is floating in the final water bath and hangs it up using a pilfered clothespin and wire he found in his dad’s practically non-existent tool shed.
“Coming!” He calls back, does a double check to be sure nothing light sensitive is out and then turns on the overhead light and the safe light off. All the developed negatives and dried prints go into the cabinet - he’ll collate them later with dates and times and details like which lens he used and which camera - he locks the whole darkroom up when he’s done.
Even though he knows no one goes down there but him.
As he takes the creaky old stairs one at a time he thinks maybe he’ll ask his parents for one of those new Nikon digital SLR cameras. They are supposed to be amazing - top of the line - very expensive.
He flicks the light to the basement off when he reaches the top of the stairs and moves into the kitchen, where he’s nearly 97% sure Ms. Mac will be.
When he turns into the room he sees half of her peering out of the pantry, so he goes over to the sink and washes his hands.
Tim counts to ninety silently while he lathers with the medical grade soap. It burns a little bit.
He shuts the water off just as the woman closes the pantry. “How did you photo’s turn out, love?”
Tim shrugs as he pats his hands dry on a clean, dust-free towel, “Okay. A little too dark still. I’ll have to figure something else out, I guess.”
The woman smiles, “You’ll get it, I’m sure. But, in the meantime, you’re parents sent you a post!” She told him happily, “I left it on the table for you.”
A stack of mail is by the phone on the desk, waiting to be stacked and sorted.
Different bills need to be forwarded to different accountants and money-managers to be taken care of. Anything Drake Industries related has to be forwarded to his mother’s executive assistant - the person’s job was to basically be Janet Drake while the real Janet Drake was out of the country.
It was a big, stressful job, and Thomas White, is just cold enough, just analytical and serious enough, to handle the task. Tim knows he had gone to Stanford, had been editor of the school paper there. His mother had personally drafted him out of Harvard Business School.
Tim had met Thomas twice now. Thomas had looked surprised the Janet even had a child. Both times.
The postcard in question- it’s nearly always a postcard- is placed in a different pile away from the out-going mail. The glossy front of the card is so bright and smooth that it catches the recessed lighting, washing out whatever ruin decorates it.
Jack and Janet Drake are in Chile - have been for three weeks now.
His fingers lift card-stock up and the lush scenery surrounding the City Gate of Machu Piccu Sanctuary stares back at him. Blue eyes drink in the details, the stone steps and the ancient columns and ceiling-less walls. It’s lovely and even in the postcard looks exciting and grand.
Tim drinks in the photo for a minute, memorizes it- takes a mental photograph, before he turns it over in his hands.
‘Tim-
The second week in Chile has been great. We move up the coast next week!
We both miss you and hope to see you soon!
Love,
Mom and Dad’
It looked like his mom’s hand-writing. The same elegant scrawl. Precise as you can get with a fountain pen.
It wasn’t his Janet’s handwriting though. He knew this because Janet would never use exclamation points- let alone two. Janet Drake never signed her letters with ‘love’, even to him. Even to his father.
His father has an assistant too. Her name is Rebecca Stuart and she went to Rutgers where she graduated with a degree in cultural anthropology and international studies. His father chose her out of a stack of applicants. She was smart, sure, but she really got the job because her family is nearly non-existent and she had no problem to committing to traveling nine months out of the year with Drake Industries.
Her job wasn’t as important has Thomas’.
She had the job of personally signing 300 holiday cards. She fetches Jack his coffee. She makes dinner reservations.
Rebecca writes Tim about 60% of his parents’ letters to him.
He figured it out, because he helper her seal the envelopes on the Holiday cards. His job was to run the moist towel along the adhesive strip and then seal up the card.
Her job took more time and he was able to study her handwriting closely for the three hours he sat with her.
Rebecca’s handwriting naturally shifted up- Janets was level-straight on the paper.
Always.
And when Rebecca wasn’t thinking about it, the dots on her ‘i’s almost never lined up with the body of the letter.
Tim knows Janet’s dots are always perfect; centered.
His mom didn’t write this card for him, or the last one he received- his Dad’s nice assistant did.
Ms. Mac’s hand on his shoulder breaks him out of his thoughts and he places the card back on the table he picked it up from. He gives her his brightest smile when she asks, “Do you want to put that in your scrap book, Timmy?”
He has a scrapbook, but only the cards his parents actually send go in there. Only the plane ticket stubs he actually boarded. He’s had it since he was four, the first page has the brochure from Haley’s Circus and the ticket stubs; a copy of the photo of him with Dick from that day.
A few of the pages have actual letters from his mom and dad. One that Janet wrote him when he turned five. And a picture his dad drew of a cartoon cat last year.
He went to an event with them when he had just turned seven and he’d snapped one photo of his parents that night- a quiet moment where his mom was brushing a stray golden wave behind her ear and his father had a crooked smile on his face and a hand on her bare shoulder.
That’s tucked into a page, too.
But for the most part, the pages in this scrapbook are empty. Tim tells himself that when he’s older he’ll get the chances to have them filled.
“Not this one, I don’t think, Ms. Mac.” He says finally, as if he was just being a picky child, not wanting certain things in his book for whatever reason.
The woman laughs quietly, “Okay then, love. How about we hang it on the fridge until they get home. Should be any week, right?”
“Yes, Ms. Mac.”
He had at *least* fourteen more days until they are State-side again, which means that he has that many days to go out at night. To follow Batman and Robin.
Tim is only four pages away from filling up his fifth scrapbook on them.
Characters: Wee!Tim Drake, Ms. Mac, (Jack and Janet Drake)
“Tim! Honey!” Ms. Mac’s shrill voice echoed down the cellar stairs. ”Come up here, sweetheart!”
The seven-year-old knows that the housekeeper never comes down here; that she doesn’t like the smell of the chemicals or the fact that, occasionally a waterbug will find its way down there. But Tim closes the envelope on the light-sensitive paper and puts it away. He uses his fingers to grab to corner of the paper that is floating in the final water bath and hangs it up using a pilfered clothespin and wire he found in his dad’s practically non-existent tool shed.
“Coming!” He calls back, does a double check to be sure nothing light sensitive is out and then turns on the overhead light and the safe light off. All the developed negatives and dried prints go into the cabinet - he’ll collate them later with dates and times and details like which lens he used and which camera - he locks the whole darkroom up when he’s done.
Even though he knows no one goes down there but him.
As he takes the creaky old stairs one at a time he thinks maybe he’ll ask his parents for one of those new Nikon digital SLR cameras. They are supposed to be amazing - top of the line - very expensive.
He flicks the light to the basement off when he reaches the top of the stairs and moves into the kitchen, where he’s nearly 97% sure Ms. Mac will be.
When he turns into the room he sees half of her peering out of the pantry, so he goes over to the sink and washes his hands.
Tim counts to ninety silently while he lathers with the medical grade soap. It burns a little bit.
He shuts the water off just as the woman closes the pantry. “How did you photo’s turn out, love?”
Tim shrugs as he pats his hands dry on a clean, dust-free towel, “Okay. A little too dark still. I’ll have to figure something else out, I guess.”
The woman smiles, “You’ll get it, I’m sure. But, in the meantime, you’re parents sent you a post!” She told him happily, “I left it on the table for you.”
A stack of mail is by the phone on the desk, waiting to be stacked and sorted.
Different bills need to be forwarded to different accountants and money-managers to be taken care of. Anything Drake Industries related has to be forwarded to his mother’s executive assistant - the person’s job was to basically be Janet Drake while the real Janet Drake was out of the country.
It was a big, stressful job, and Thomas White, is just cold enough, just analytical and serious enough, to handle the task. Tim knows he had gone to Stanford, had been editor of the school paper there. His mother had personally drafted him out of Harvard Business School.
Tim had met Thomas twice now. Thomas had looked surprised the Janet even had a child. Both times.
The postcard in question- it’s nearly always a postcard- is placed in a different pile away from the out-going mail. The glossy front of the card is so bright and smooth that it catches the recessed lighting, washing out whatever ruin decorates it.
Jack and Janet Drake are in Chile - have been for three weeks now.
His fingers lift card-stock up and the lush scenery surrounding the City Gate of Machu Piccu Sanctuary stares back at him. Blue eyes drink in the details, the stone steps and the ancient columns and ceiling-less walls. It’s lovely and even in the postcard looks exciting and grand.
Tim drinks in the photo for a minute, memorizes it- takes a mental photograph, before he turns it over in his hands.
‘Tim-
The second week in Chile has been great. We move up the coast next week!
We both miss you and hope to see you soon!
Love,
Mom and Dad’
It looked like his mom’s hand-writing. The same elegant scrawl. Precise as you can get with a fountain pen.
It wasn’t his Janet’s handwriting though. He knew this because Janet would never use exclamation points- let alone two. Janet Drake never signed her letters with ‘love’, even to him. Even to his father.
His father has an assistant too. Her name is Rebecca Stuart and she went to Rutgers where she graduated with a degree in cultural anthropology and international studies. His father chose her out of a stack of applicants. She was smart, sure, but she really got the job because her family is nearly non-existent and she had no problem to committing to traveling nine months out of the year with Drake Industries.
Her job wasn’t as important has Thomas’.
She had the job of personally signing 300 holiday cards. She fetches Jack his coffee. She makes dinner reservations.
Rebecca writes Tim about 60% of his parents’ letters to him.
He figured it out, because he helper her seal the envelopes on the Holiday cards. His job was to run the moist towel along the adhesive strip and then seal up the card.
Her job took more time and he was able to study her handwriting closely for the three hours he sat with her.
Rebecca’s handwriting naturally shifted up- Janets was level-straight on the paper.
Always.
And when Rebecca wasn’t thinking about it, the dots on her ‘i’s almost never lined up with the body of the letter.
Tim knows Janet’s dots are always perfect; centered.
His mom didn’t write this card for him, or the last one he received- his Dad’s nice assistant did.
Ms. Mac’s hand on his shoulder breaks him out of his thoughts and he places the card back on the table he picked it up from. He gives her his brightest smile when she asks, “Do you want to put that in your scrap book, Timmy?”
He has a scrapbook, but only the cards his parents actually send go in there. Only the plane ticket stubs he actually boarded. He’s had it since he was four, the first page has the brochure from Haley’s Circus and the ticket stubs; a copy of the photo of him with Dick from that day.
A few of the pages have actual letters from his mom and dad. One that Janet wrote him when he turned five. And a picture his dad drew of a cartoon cat last year.
He went to an event with them when he had just turned seven and he’d snapped one photo of his parents that night- a quiet moment where his mom was brushing a stray golden wave behind her ear and his father had a crooked smile on his face and a hand on her bare shoulder.
That’s tucked into a page, too.
But for the most part, the pages in this scrapbook are empty. Tim tells himself that when he’s older he’ll get the chances to have them filled.
“Not this one, I don’t think, Ms. Mac.” He says finally, as if he was just being a picky child, not wanting certain things in his book for whatever reason.
The woman laughs quietly, “Okay then, love. How about we hang it on the fridge until they get home. Should be any week, right?”
“Yes, Ms. Mac.”
He had at *least* fourteen more days until they are State-side again, which means that he has that many days to go out at night. To follow Batman and Robin.
Tim is only four pages away from filling up his fifth scrapbook on them.