Chapter Text
Duke knew this would bite him in the ass at some point.
“What is that?”
Duke glances up and around his room, trying to locate the source of Tim's incredulity.
“The corkboard Duke.”
“Oh! That's how I'm making sure Talia is enjoying herself when we go out to eat.”
Tim pinches his nose. “You are not dating Talia.”
“I am not.” Duke agrees, “She's so out of my league.”
“She is also a part of the League of Assassins.”
“Right that too. Would be a bit weird if you married Ra’s’ sister and I was dating Talia.”
Tim pulls such a face, Duke has to choke down the laughter that threatens to break him and settles for coughing really hard.
“I am not even gracing that with a response.” He grumbles, turning back to the corkboard, “But this? This is excellent.”
Duke laughs. “My Talia corkboard?”
Tim winces but continues, “It's masterfully organised Duke. If it weren't for the actual content, I would use it as an example for the cave.”
Duke quirks a brow. “What’s wrong with the content?”
“You know exactly what is wrong with it.”
“There is nothing wrong with it, but if you ignore the content it’s an awesome example.”
Tim turns around with his mouth open in preparation to say something, but pauses and hums. “That’s… not wrong.”
Hm. Duke may have fucked up a bit here. Just a little.
Duke may have fucked up a lot, actually. Why is his dumb corkboard in the Drake Manor meeting room?
Better question! Why are the Bats currently on their way to said meeting room in civvies, and why is Tim at the front of the room with a presentation?
Duke does not have a good feeling about this. So he does what he does whenever he doesn’t feel good about things.
“Talia, my corkboard!” He hisses in the corner of the room. Tim barely glances his way as he goes through the flashcards in his hands.
Talia, the traitor, laughs. “Your corkboard is wonderful, Duke. I’m sure everyone will appreciate it.”
“They will not-”
“Duke, come help me up here!” Tim calls out.
“I didn’t agree to this! This is slavery all over again-”
“Fine, don’t.” Tim huffs from the front. Talia snickers airily, and Duke glares at his phone.
“Do not laugh at my pain.”
“I will do as I wish. Now go and deal with the consequences of your actions.”
“Talia please. If you snipe me right now, I will go down with grace.”
“Unfortunately I appreciate you a bit too much.”
“What if I just jumped out of the window?” Duke contemplates.
“The assassin would catch you.”
“Fuck you too.” He hangs up the phone and stands at the window. The assassin waves at him from the rooftop across from him. He waves towards Tim and mouths ‘If you let me die, you can take him’. The assassin shakes his head.
Okay shit. Duke is going to have to suffer through this. Damn.
Just as he is considering bashing his head on the corner of the table, Bruce walks in. Suddenly, his suffering is minor because the bit takes precedent.
Bruce sits in one of the chairs without looking up at the front of the room. This means Duke sees the exact moment Bruce registers the corkboard and presentation.
“Tim.”
“Hey B! I told you I was hosting this month’s Bat meeting, right?” Tim cheerily smiles.
“What is it on?” Bruce grits out.
“The most effective ways to make links in cases.”
Duke takes no small amount of glee in how Bruce’s face droops so low, even Tim winces. For a brief moment, he wonders if the older is having a stroke. Then Bruce sighs and pulls out his notebook and stationery.
Maybe this won’t be as bad as he thought it would be.
This is reinforced everytime someone walks into the room. Jason glances between the board, Tim, and Bruce, and immediately bursts into laughter. Damian goes to tear apart Duke’s progress and Jason barely manages to restrain Duke from permanently blinding the kid.
(It only seems insane. Duke is very reasonable and it took forever to narrow Talia’s favourite restaurants from a thousand and sixteen to the remaining hundred and seven, and if Duke has to start from scratch, he won’t hesitate to snap.)
Dick walks in, and immediately turns to walk back out, only to be pushed back in by Cass.
“You promised you would suffer through this meeting with the rest of us.” She scolds.
Dick waves in Duke’s general direction. “But Cass-” He whines.
Duke glares offhandedly and leans across the table to yank the older boys arm hard. Dick immediately tries to retaliate by throwing a chair at him. It smashes through the window behind him.
“Shit.” Dick turns to Bruce apologetic. Duke knows better and turns to Tim.
“If you let it go, I will ask Talia for any one thing you want.” He offers. Tim nods and turns to Dick in disappointment. Dick, who Bruce is currently shaking his head at, turns to Tim with wide eyes.
“Nope, all pity is lost. Pay for the window big D.”
“Asshole.” Dick mutters.
“For that, you can pay for two, and the chair.”
“This is why I don’t come to meetings Cass.”
Steph and Barbara enter the glass covered room with little surprise. Barbara scoffs upon seeing the board, but pats Duke on the back all the same. Duke feels very accomplished.
Steph mutters something that Duke thinks is an extremely racist comment, and flips her middle finger up at him before collapsing in one of the chairs with little fanfare.
“Thank you all for coming to today’s seminar on building cases.” Tim announces from the front of the room, bringing all conversation to a close.
He begins to click through the slides, explaining how he builds his case files and any physical forms. Tim stares pointedly at Bruce and Barbara as he explains the importance of paper files over digital files. Bruce looks away. Barbara stares right back and pulls out her laptop to make notes, tapping each key loudly.
All in all, it’s pretty useful and Duke finds himself actually paying attention and forgetting his initial hesitation. Until the examples.
“Okay, so I have some of my physical case files here. They’re fairly similar to our digital files, but I have a lot more sensitive notes hand written in here and can more easily lay things out by moving the papers as I need to.” He picks up a file and pulls out some sheets, “So I could move each of these papers to make my timeline make sense as facts update. Obviously, once everything is sorted, you do have to digitalise everything for Oracle’s purposes but paper files are great for starting and during the case.”
“They also allow you to make physical connections.” Tim drags the corkboard on top of the meeting table.
“Kudos to Duke for letting me borrow this as an active example. If you’d like to explain what you are trying to solve here, we’d all appreciate it.”
Duke briefly considers legging it towards the window. Dick’s very quiet groan stops him.
“Thank you Tim.” He grins, standing and moving towards the head of the table, “The main goal of this corkboard is to solve the current biggest mystery in my life: what is Talia Al Ghul’s favourite restaurant?”
Everyone sighs wearily. Maybe this bit is going cold? Whatever, he finds it funny.
“I started with all of Talia’s missions, because she tends to write where and what she would eat on these missions. Then, I have spent each meeting with her slowly whittling down the options. We had them grouped in four different ways: the cuisine, the price, the location and the date she originally went to the restaurant where applicable.”
“Colour-coded?” Bruce asks, pointing at the different coloured strings.
“Yep! Blue for cuisine, red for price, orange for location and then I have dates tagged and grouped them accordingly.”
“The board seems very… crowded?” Cass asks.
“Well, I originally had about four of them, but that was because we had over a thousand restaurants to work through.”
“Oh.”
There’s a beat of awkward silence.
“Thank you Duke!” Tim claps his hands, and moves back to the front. “Well, that’s the end of today’s seminar. Do we have any questions?”
“Yeah, Duke! How is Talia?” Barbara asks.
“She’s great! Thanks for asking.”
“Do you know anything else about her?” Bruce asks.
“No more than I last told you.”
“Okay!” Tim interrupts, “Any questions about the seminar?”
“Nope!”
“I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, you were pretty clear.”
Duke shrugs at Tim’s incredulous look.