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Tim came to full alertness when his head collided with the window. His eyes snap open and he blinks while he tries to gather his thoughts. He hadn’t even realised he had fallen asleep until his rude awaking. He was still in the car, Cassie was in the driver’s seat happily humming along to a song playing quietly on the radio, Bart was asleep in the shotgun seat and Conner was also fast asleep, he was sprawled out in the back with his head resting on Tim’s thighs. Tim didn’t mind as he liked running his hands through his hair, it was easy enough to do while Conner was asleep on him.
Looking out the window, Tim found that it was early morning as the sun was still close to the horizon. It looked like they were going through country lanes and Tim has no idea where Cassie is taking them next. It’s been about 2 days since they left Washington, they’ve been driving around because they haven’t decided where to go next.
It’s been just under two months since Tim joined the three others on this trip and what a ride it has been so far. Everyday has been a new adventure, of course they get the boring days and days when he misses home, but overall Tim is loving it. He gets along with the people he's with really well, he's practically slotted right into their group like he’s known them for years rather than just a couple of months.
He and Conner are now pretty much attached at the hips, having grown very close over the two months. Tim assumes that they’re dating, but they haven’t really talked about it like that. They make out often, sleep in the same bed cuddling together, they sometimes walk hand in hand and Tim trusts him with almost everything he has. Oh what was he thinking! That is dating! Yes, they are dating! Hopefully... maybe….
At first it scared Tim about how well they connected, how well they go together, but over time Tim just accepted it and went with the flow. Conner is an amazing man and Tim can’t believe that someone like him has fallen for someone like him.
Tim smiles as Conner mumbles something in his sleep, something about burgers. He’s handsome even in sleep. Tim strokes the sides of his face lightly and can’t help but be reminded about how much he’s come to like this man. In bed they have yet to go all the way, Tim still wants to wait a couple more weeks before they do anything major just to make sure he wants it. They’ve messed around of course but they have yet to hit a homerun.
“Hey there sleepy head, have a good nap?” Cassie calls out to him.
Tim looks up to see her glancing at him through the mirror, he smiles at her, “Not too bad. You drove all night?”
Cassie shakes her head as she focuses back on the road, “No Bart swapped with me about halfway through, I’ve been driving for a good 4 nearly 5 hours now.”
Tim frowns, “Why didn’t you wake me up, it was my turn to drive after Bart.”
Cassie shrugs and sends him a smile through the mirror, “Na, you two looked comfy and settled in the back so we left you. You can drive next though, there’s a service station about 10 minutes from now that I’ll be pulling over in.”
Tim nods his agreement and then proceeds to look out the window at the passing fields.
The 10 minutes go by quickly and Cassie is pulling up into the service station. She parks in the nearly empty car park and turns the car off. At this point Bart is starting to wake up, letting out a low grumbling sound while Kon is still out cold on Tim’s lap.
“Right, we’ll get something to eat and chill for an hour or two before heading back on the road, though before we leave we need some more petrol.” She says out loud.
“No problem.” Tim replies as Cassie exits the car and stretches, Bart is now blinking and trying to get his bearings, “We’ve pulled up at a service station.” He tells him.
Bart squints at him before looking around, “Oh, okay.” With that he fumbles with his seat belt and gets out the car.
Tim watches with an amused smile until a tapping of glass gets his attention. He turns to see Cassie pressed up against the glass, “Wake him up, we’ll meet you in there.” She tells him and then disappears from sight.
Tim looks down at the sleeping man and tries to decide on the best way to wake him up. He could either be mean or nice. A few seconds go by and Tim decides on being nice. He leans down and peppers light kisses over Kon’s face. When he doesn’t stir from those Tim places harder ones on him. When that doesn’t even work Tim debates on going with the mean option and just slapping him awake, but before he could do that the man was finally stirring and waking up. Tim places a kiss to his lips and feels Kon's mouth move sloppily against his own.
Tim pulls back and sees tired blue eyes blinking up at him. Tim smiles, “Welcome back to the land of the living.”
Kon grumbles something and pushes himself up into a sitting position, “What time is it?”
“No idea, though it’s morning and we’ve stopped for breakfast. Cassie and Bart have gone on ahead, leaving me to wake your ass up.”
Kon doesn’t reply instead he reaches out and cups Tim’s head and pulls him in for a kiss. Tim hums happily and returns the kiss. He breaks it up by pulling backwards and starts to open the car door, “Come on, they’ll be wondering where we are.” Kon sends him a fake pout before getting out the car himself. Tim grabs the keys from the front and then locks the car and he and Kon head to where Cassie and Bart have gone.
They get into the service station and find they’re friends sat in a restaurant type place. They join them at the table and then quickly decide on what they’ll be eating for breakfast. While they wait for their food, Tim observes the others. Cassie looks tired, she sits next to Bart quietly watching people around them and taking everything in. Bart appears to be energetic like normal, Tim notices that he’s basically buzzing in his seat as he talks to Conner. Conner, the early riser that he is, appears as fresh and ready to go despite only waking up minutes ago. Tim knows that he doesn’t look grand right now, he doesn’t feel too tired but he’s only just half way through his first cup of coffee, once he finishes his second he’ll perk up.
About 5 minutes later their food comes out and the four of them tuck in. From then its just silence between them as they all eat their meals. Bart was the first one to finish eating and decides to leave the table to scout around the service station to see what he can find. Conner was second and decides to join Bart on hunting around. Tim and Cassie finish around the same time and make small talk until their partners return back to the table.
The two men return with the news that there’s a large food store, apparently you can get a wide variety of snacks and drinks in there for a cheap price, so as a group they decide to go there before they leave.
The conversation quickly turns into a debate on where they should go next.
“We could start heading up towards Chicago, pass through West Virginia, Ohio and that. Then from there we can head over to Central City and Keystone to see Bart’s family.” Cassie says.
“I guess that gives us a direction to go in. After Keystone can we head to Kansas? I want to see my grandparents in Smallville since we’re passing through.” Kon asks.
“Of course. That sounds good. So along the way we’ll just see what happens and what we come across.”
“Excuse me.” A polite voice comes from next to their table. The four of them turn to see the waitress looking at them, “Sorry to interrupt you but I overheard your conversation, are you guys on a road trip?” Four heads nod in answer and she smiles, “I hope you don’t mind but can I suggest a place for you guys to visit?”
“Uh, sure, I guess.” Kon answers her.
Her smile brightens, “There’s a place about 10 miles away from here. It’s a big cavern but within it it’s a lovely place to go swimming. There’s a waterfall which fills it up. It’s out of the way but it’s a popular place to go for your age group, you can go swimming there, then when night falls you can camp out on the field that you need to cross to get to it.” She tells them.
The four of them all share a look with each other and come to a silent agreement, “Sounds good, could you give us any directions on how to find it?” Cassie asks her.
The waitress nods and starts to write on her note pad she had been carrying around with her. Once she was done she tears the page out and gives it to Cassie. “If you follow those you should be able to find it easily. Since it looks like it’ll be a nice day I suggest that you take a barbeque with you.”
Cassie hands the paper to Tim and then smiles up at her, “Thank you. We’ll go and check that out.”
“You’re welcome. Since I’m here is there anything else I can get you at all.”
Tim immediately looks at her, “Could I have a black coffee please.”
The waitress then disappears to do his drink and Tim ignores the three sets of eyes staring at him. He looks down at the paper with the directions on it once again. The place seems easy enough to get to, it’ll just be finding an appropriate place to park once they’re there.
The waitress comes back with his drink and then disappears. Tim takes a few sips before setting it back down. It was at that point that he looks up at the others, “You guys can keep staring all you want, it’s not going to change anything.”
“Dude, should you be having another cup right now? You only finished the other one several minutes ago.” Kon says.
Tim turns to him and raises an eyebrow. He doesn’t say anything to the man knowing his look says everything he needs it to.
Kon frowns at him and turns away, muttering something like he’s one day going to stop him from drinking the stuff. Tim smirks at his little victory. He turns to Cassie and Bart to see them look away immediately, this causes his smirk to grow. “That’s what I thought.” He says smugly.
When Tim finishes up his coffee he goes to pay for their meal. After that the four of them head to the snack shop Kon and Bart had found and picked up a ton of snacks and they even manage to get a small barbeque pack.
They leave the service station after getting petrol with Tim in the driver’s seat, Kon next to him in shotgun and Cassie and Bart together in the back. They put the radio on and chat and generally have a good time traveling.
Tim tries to follow the directions as close as he can, he has to get the others to check them for him as well just to be sure. Soon enough he pulls over into a large open field that’s practically in the middle of nowhere and drives through it. Tim can see old tire markings in the grass, so he simply follows them through the field until they see a couple other cars parked there. Tim parks off to the side, a decent distance away from the others to ensure their own privacy for when they need it.
“Are we not going to talk about how fishy this sounds? It could be a trap for all we know.” Bart speaks out randomly as Tim turns the engine off.
“I guess it is fishy, but we’re here now and we may as well go check it out to see if she was right.” Kon replies as he gets out of the car.
The three others follow suit and gather at the boot of the car, they look around to see if they can find the apparent cavern that was supposed to be here. If they listen closely enough they can hear running water, so they at least know that they were sort of close to it. Tim looks down at the directions again.
“It says here that at the far end of the field there’s a sudden drop, apparently there’s a path way that leads you down to the rocks of the small lake that the water fall makes. We’ll find the cavern just behind the water fall and to get to it we need to climb over some large rocks.”
Conner lets out a breath, “Well okay then, shall we walk to see if we can find it then?”
The four of them start walking in a direction away from the cars. If they look closely enough, a faint trail in the grass can be seen from where people have walked over it repeatedly. They follow for a few minutes before they must stop. A sudden drop it was. The field just cuts off and opens to a whole place lower down below them. They see where the waterfall comes out from the side just down to their left and that must mean the water is coming through from underneath the field. The waterfall spills into a large circle which look like a quarry. Beyond that what is surrounding the area is a forest, looking out towards the horizon it appears to be a big forest.
The view from where they stood really was something. It helps that the day was turning out nice, clear blue skies and the sun shining bright in the sky. Tim smiles to himself, they definitely don’t get views like this in Gotham. He’ll have to send a picture to Steph, she’ll be so jealous!
“Well I take back what I said. She was right.” Bart comments.
Down below they hear some shouts, they all look towards where the voice was to see another group of people down there together. They were pushing each other into the water and playing music.
“Think they’ll mind if we join them down there?” Kon asks eyeing them up.
Next to him Cassie shrugs, “No idea. But it doesn’t seem like this belongs to anyone so we’re free to do as we please.”
Conner takes this in for consideration before nodding his head, “Okay good point. Let’s head back to the car and take some stuff down there.”
The four of them walk back to the car and get what they think they’ll be needing. The four of them change into their swim wear, Cassie hides in the car to change while Kon and Bart have no problems stripping out in the open and changing. Feeling more self-conscious than those two, Tim waits until Cassie is done in the car to change into his swimming trunks.
After he had his trunks on he sticks his t-shirt back on. Outside the car he could see Conner and Bart strolling around shirtless and even Cassie was shirtless but she had short board shorts on with her bikini while the guys wore their own trunks. Tim wasn’t ready for them to see his body, legs were fine but his torso, definitely not yet. Even Conner hadn’t properly seen him with his shirt off, whenever they did stuff Tim always kept his shirt on. Of course the other man had questioned him but Tim shrugged the question off and thankfully Kon left it at that. There was just a few things that he didn’t want Conner knowing.
Tim shivers at the memories and quickly push them to the side as he climbs out the car. He walks around and packs his own bag with everything he thinks he’ll need. Sun cream, camera, snacks, bottled water, sunglasses and phone.
The four of them put their shoes back on and head back to the waterfall. When they get to the drop, one by one they make their way down the path that’s just to the right of the water fall. They had to be careful in not slipping while they work their way down as the water from the fall was making the path wet and damp.
They get to the bottom with no incidents and make their way around the large pool of water. On the opposite side they can see where the other group has set up shop and they decide to stay away from them and set up where they stood. The four of them lay down their towels and sprawl out doing individual things, Tim starts to snap pictures of the waterfall and playing around with his camera, Cassie simply sunbathes on her front while Kon and Bart decide to go and check out the forest area for a while.
It was like that for an hour. Tim had stopped taking photos after he was satisfied with the few dozen pictures he had captured and had since turned to reading a book, Cassie was now on her back and the other two were still in the forest somewhere.
Another half hour goes by before Bart and Kon once again appear along with the complaint that they're hungry. The four of them the eat some snacks they had brought and decide to have the barbeque in the evening.
It was hot around them and Tim moved over to where there was shade, it was getting too hot for him and he can feel his skin starting to burn despite having plastered himself in sun cream. It wasn’t long until Kon joined him and wrapped a sweaty arm around him. “Kon, get off me! You’re all sweaty.” He protests. Kon just simply laughs and goes about trying to smother him with his sweat covered limbs.
Kon doesn’t pay his protests any attention and carries on trying to smother him. They end up wrestling for a few minutes before Tim pulls a ‘ninja move’ which ends with him pinning Conner down to the ground. Tim grins down at him, taking in another victory for the day. Kon pouts up at him and Tim leans down to kiss him.
They share a couple kisses before Kon rolls them over so he’s now pinning Tim down on the floor. While looking up at Kon Tim tries very hard to not stare at his shiny skin from where it was sweaty. Apparently, he fails because Kon is smirking at him and then leaning down close to his face, “Like what you see?”
Tim doesn’t say anything as other man already knows his answer and just smirks at Tim’s silence. They share a few kisses before a voice is breaking them up, “Oi, love birds. Swim now and make out later. Time is short.”
They break away from each other wearing sheepish smiles and head towards the water where Cassie and Bart are.
“Let’s go behind the waterfall, I want to see what it’s like behind it.” Bart says pointing over to where a few large boulders disappear behind the rushing water.
They make their way over to the boulders and begin to climb over them to see behind. Kon goes first followed by Cassie, Bart and Tim. They make it past the waterfall without getting too wet and they finally see what's behind the rushing wall of water.
It opens up to a large cave. The roof was high above their heads, below them from the rocks there was another large pool of water, only that this seems deeper than outside, the walls of the cave curve around making it seem like a dome. It was amazing.
They stand there gaping at the first for several minutes before they hear splashing and laughing. Right, they weren’t the only ones here. They look down to see the other group on the other side of the cave perched on some rocks. The group notice them and send a wave, being polite the four of them wave back.
“Just to let you know it’s safe. The water in here is about just over 2 metres, you can easily jump in and not hit the bottom, but you can still dive down and touch the floor if you really want too.” One of them calls out before turning back to their own friends.
“Good to know,” Cassie mutters looking at the water, then louder she says, “Thank you.”
Kon claps his hands, which causes an echo to ring out, and says with a grin, “Well, whose first?”
Tim immediately steps away from him. He is not being chucked in there. From the corner of his eye he sees Cassie also taking a step back away from him. That leaves Bart at Kon’s mercy. Not wasting the opportunity Kon grabs Bart’s wrists and pulls him over the edge of the boulder and let’s go. Bart falls with a yelp before landing in the water with a splash. A few seconds later he breaks the surface and splutters water everywhere.
He glares up at them on the rock, “I will get you get Kon. When you least expect it I’ll come and get you!” He threatens.
The three on the rock burst out laughing at seeing Bart’s glare.
“How’s the water down there Bart?” Kon asks mockingly.
Behind him Tim looks over at Cassie and she glances back. Making eye contact a silent message travels between them that leaves them smirking evilly.
“Hey Kon,” Kon turns around to face them, “Why don’t you see how the water is yourself?”
That’s all the warning Conner gets before both Cassie and Tim lunge at him and push him backwards. Kon flails his arms around to attempt to get his balance back but it doesn’t work and he’s falling backwards. At the last second he was able to grab the closet person and drag them with him which happened to be Cassie.
Tim watches them both fall into the water making a larger splash than Bart had. They come up spitting water everywhere.
Cassie glares at Kon, “I am going to kill you Conner!” she then lunges at him and tries to get his head under the water. Conner laughs and accepts the challenge and fights her back. Bart joins in on Cassie’s side and together they tag team against him.
Tim smiles from where he was standing as he watches them. They kind of remind him of him and his siblings, play fighting and goofing off. It makes him miss them a little. He doesn’t dwell on it too much, there’s not a lot he can do about it right now.
He leaves the rock and heads back out towards where they set up for the day and grabs his camera and the spare towel he brought with him before heading back in behind the waterfall. He uses the towel to protect his camera from the water, the gap between the rushing water and wall was wide enough to get through without getting wet but it was better to be safe than sorry.
He perches back on the rock and starts to take photos of the trio beneath him and of around the cave. He does it until a voice calls up at him about 10 minutes later, “Come on Timmy, come join us!”
He looks at Kon through the lens and shakes his head, “I’m good thanks. It’s nice and comfy up here.”
He sees Conner pout and takes a photo of it. He can’t help but grin and the ridiculousness of it. When he looks back down at the group in the water he spots Kon heading for the edge where he can climb out of the water and onto some rocks. Tim watches narrowed eyes as Kon makes it onto dry land and starts making his way up to him. While he watches Kon he also sees Bart moving in the water in same direction as Kon had just done. Thankfully Cassie stays floating in the water.
As Kon edges closer to him Tim scrambles away from the side as far as he can. He knows what the other man is up to and he’s going to avoid it as much as he can. When the man reaches him he gives Tim a look with a smile that sets him on edge. Clutching his camera tighter Tim takes a step back as Kon steps forward.
When Tim couldn’t go any further Conner reaches him and tries to take the camera out of his hand but Tim protests and curls around it. Huffing Kon starts struggling against Tim to get him to release the camera. Tim falls down to the ground in order to protect it but soon enough there were two hands on him trying to pry away his precious device. The scuffle between them lasts for a good 5 minutes, though in the end the hands get the better of Tim and pry away his camera.
Tim scrambles to his feet to try and snatch away the camera but he’s blocked by a body and hands grabbing his wrists. He looks up to find Conner grinning down at him. Tim looks over his shoulder to find Bart standing there victoriously with his camera.
That’s when Conner starts to slowly force Tim backwards, a step at a time towards the edge of the rock. When his left foot slips off the edge Tim sends Kon the hardest glare he could muster up, “Don’t. You. Dare.”
Of course the man ignores him and pushes him the last step so Tim loses his balance and falls off the rock. The fall is literally seconds long and before he knows it he’s hitting the water. The sudden coldness of the water shocks him at first but he’s able to scramble upwards and break the surface to take in air. He glares up at the boys on the rock and then he turns it to Cassie when he hears her laughing at him.
It wasn’t long before a grin broke out on Tim’s face and he splashes Cassie in revenge. She splashes him back and suddenly it’s a splashing war. Kon bombs them both a minute later and they then turn on him. Bart takes a lot longer to join them, hopefully he was putting Tim’s camera back to the set up outside the cave. He joins in and the four of them have a full war between themselves.
It was getting late into the night and by now the temperature had dropped. It wasn’t exactly cold but it wasn’t warm either, it was mild. However Tim was a comfortable temperature as he lay against Kon on the floor as they look up at the stars. The other man was warm against him and it balanced out any cold that the night was giving out.
After being in the water for a couple hours they all retreated back on land and settled down to get dry. It didn’t take long with the sun still in the sky, Tim however had immediately gone up to the car to get dry and change his clothes. The clothes were heavy to be in when soaking wet and it made him uncomfortable, so he changed out of them so he could easily relax for the rest of the day.
When evening came they went back up onto the field and set up the camping tent. After they finished setting everything up, they started up the barbeque pack they had brought and had a variety of sausages and burgers for dinner and different bottles of pop for drink. A few hours later they started a small fire and toasted marshmallows over it, it was great fun. Tim couldn’t remember the last time he had done something like it, something so simple yet so satisfying.
When the day finally settled into the night the two couples said their goodnights and separated. Cassie and Bart went to go sleep in the tent while Kon and Tim choose to stargaze before settling in for the night. They got their own sleeping bags and settle down on the grass several feet away from the tent. They lay in silence for a long time, both lost in their own thoughts while looking up at the star filled sky. Tim smiles, he hasn’t felt this at peace in a long time. Gotham is great, well not great but it’s his hometown and where he grew up so of course it’s going to hold a special place in his heart, but the city doesn’t beat views like this.
Next to him Kon shifts and tucks an arm behind Tim’s neck and pulls him closer before he folds his other arm behind his head. “The stars are super bright out here.” He says quietly.
Tim makes a noise of agreement before saying, “Yeah… we don’t see stars like this in Gotham. Well we don’t really see the stars but that’s not the point.”
Kon lets out a laugh and gives Tim a squeeze and then they both settle into silence once again.
Tim is the next one to break the silence, he changes his position so he’s now hovering over the man and straddling his waist, he leans forward and rests his forearms next the man’s head. Tim looks down and makes eye contact with his two blue orbs, “Can I ask you a question?” He asks quietly, feeling embarrassed for what he’ll be asking.
Kon smiles up at him and laughs out, “You just did.” Tim pouts at the answer but doesn’t say anything.
Seeing that Tim wasn’t laughing or even smiling Kon sobers up from laughing. He places his hand on Tim’s hip and runs it up his back in a comforting fashion, “You can ask me anything Tim.”
Tim takes a breath and looks away nervously, “Um, it’s pretty stupid but I wanted to confirm and ask that we are dating right? It’s just that we haven’t talked about it but we do everything a couple would and I-”
“Shush.” Kon interrupts. He removed his hand from Tim’s back and placed it over the other man’s mouth. “It’s not stupid because you’re right we haven’t talked about it. Uh, is it fair to assume that we’re dating because I have already told my family that I have a boyfriend and now their super excited to meet you by the way.” Kon lets out a awkward laugh and looks away from Tim.
Tim leans up and takes Kon’s hand away from his mouth but doesn’t let go of it. He laces their fingers together and squeezes gently, “So is that a yes to we are dating then.”
Instead of making fun of him like Tim had thought he would, Kon is looking at him with a serious expression, “If you want to be a yes, then yes we are. I would really like it if it was a yes.”
Tim lets out a smile and once again makes eye contact with the man underneath. Kon says nothing as he pushes up into a sitting position, he wraps his arms around Tim and switches their positions so he’s now on top. He doesn’t give Tim a chance to say anything because he leans down to steal a few kisses.
Tim kisses him back and it turns into a heavy make out session. When they pull apart both of them are left breathless but both are grinning widely. Kon moves his head and swipes away some hair from Tim’s face and then cups his cheek, “Tim, to make it official because we’re both apparently idiots, would you do me the honour and be my boyfriend?”
Tim lets out a laugh and rolls his eyes, he reaches up and intertwines his fingers into Conner’s hair, “Yes Conner, I would love to be your boyfriend.”
Kon grins and leans down to steal another kiss, only this time it’s a lot less heated than the last one. It’s slow and intimate and Tim loves it.
Conner pulls away and looks down at him, his blue eyes standing out from his skin and even the starry sky behind him, “Perfect,” He grins.