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The last thing she expected was to be attacked in her own apartment, so it was understandable that her reaction to the threat was a little delayed. However she still had post-patrol adrenaline running through her which allowed her to react without thinking about it too much.
She spins around and fakes a punch before kicking her leg out to try and connect to the intruders stomach. Her punch was easily dodged and her ankle was grabbed, the sudden stop in her momentum causes her to stumble but she’s able to right herself and frees her leg from the grip. She makes a move to punch yet again but this time her wrist was grabbed and before she could react a hand was against her side and forcing her to turn back around.
As Steph spins an arm appears around her waist, locking her free arm against her side and the hand trapped in her intruders grip was tight and didn’t let go which forces her arm to bend in an awkward angle causing her discomfort. She tries to kick out but then she was being pulled backwards until her back hits something soft but yet firm. It wasn’t until a chin hooks over her shoulders and a soft gentle voice saying, “hey, hey, it’s just me, okay” that she realises who her attacker really was.
She lets out an annoyed huff as her arm is let go and as the arm wrapped around her waist disappears. Steph forces herself away from the body behind her so she could turn around and scowl at them, hands on her hips and everything.
“What the fuck Tim!” She demands looking at her boyfriend. “You of all people should know not to sneak up on someone like that!”
Tim has the audacity to look a little ashamed and Steph finds herself unable to stay made at him for long. After a moment she drops her hands to her sides and gives him a weary look. “What are you doing here Tim? I thought you were with the Titans for the weekend?”
“Yeah I was but you know…” he reaches forward and before she could stop him, he was pulling her towards him until their bodies were pressed together, leaving hardly any room in between them, “I missed you that’s all. Wanted to come and surprise you.”
She looks up at him to find him staring back with piercing blue eyes, all of his attention purely on her and absolutely nothing else. It makes her shiver but also makes her heart-beat in anticipation. “You’re a hypocrite, I hope you know that. You’d hate it if I surprised you like how you just did.” She tells him with a fake frown. She wasn’t happy about how he surprised her but then again she wasn’t going to be angry at the chance to see her boyfriend.
Tim grins at her, showing his white teeth. He starts bending down towards her as he says, “Yeah I know, but you like me anyway.”
She couldn’t help but smile back, starting to lean up towards him so they could meet halfway, “For some stupid reason yeah.”
Their lips meet and Steph finds herself melting against him. She wraps her arms around his neck and grips his shoulders tight as their lips dance. Steph makes a humming sound as she feels his arms wrap around her, drawing her in impossibly closer.
Tim makes a loud groaning sound against her and if she was in the right state of mind she would have realised that would have been her first clue. However she wasn’t in the right state of mind because Tim was suddenly lifting her up off the ground, his hands holding firmly onto her thighs (when did they get there?) and taking them over to the bedroom.
She lets out a squeal as Tim chucks her onto the bed with strength you wouldn’t think he would have, then she lets out a laugh as she watches Tim climb onto the bed towards her, only stopping when he’s directly above her.
She reaches up and cups the back of his neck, dragging him down for a kiss. Tim immediately responds and much more eagerly than Steph was expecting. His tongue forces its way into her mouth and begins to map it out causing Steph to moan at the action. After a while he pulls up from the kiss, which has left her breathless, and begins to kiss her neck and collar bone.
Steph squirms at the attention on her neck but doesn’t push him away, instead she laughs and clings onto him tighter, “Who are you and what have you done with Timothy Jackson Drake?”
Tim huffs against her neck in amusement, she could feel him smiling against her skin. “Still here, I just missed you that’s all.”
“Well, I’m certainly not complaining.” Steph says arching her neck to give Tim more access to the skin there.
As Tim ravishes her neck she takes the time to run her hands over his shoulders and down his back. As she does she feels all of his firm and lean muscles, feeling how tight and tense they were. She frowns momentarily, they can’t have that now can they?
She reaches for his face, pushing him away from her neck so they could kiss once again. She takes in a sharp breath as they do, it’s hot, needy and passionate. Whatever was going on with Tim, it was certainly affecting his sex drive that night. As they kiss Steph starts trying to massage his back, trying to get his muscles to relax underneath her touches. However it seems to do the opposite to what she wanted, they become even more tense as he goes ridged above her but he keeps on kissing her like there’s nothing else in the world.
Seeming to have enough of kissing Tim breaks away and starts on her neck again, this time running his hands down over her body as he does. Steph couldn’t help the gasp that escapes her as he runs his hands over her breasts, over her abs and down to the waist band of her armoured pants.
It’s when he starts easing them down her legs that she gets the first (but actually second) sign that something wasn’t right. Now Steph was all for Tim taking control of their sex, she enjoyed it but it was unusual for him to be the one in control when they’re in the bedroom. Normally that’s down to her, Tim is so shy and bashful that he usually follows her lead and does nothing without getting her confirmation first but right here and now he’s just doing it.
It takes her back to the groan he done against her just now, then how tense he was feeling under her hands and now how he seems to be really into it more than usual. Something was up with him, perhaps the past few days have left him feeling super stressful? Maybe he’s using sex as a distraction of something?
That thought doesn’t please her, though it’s not entirely surprising either as it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened.
She tries to clear her head of the arousal that’s built up inside of her, it certainly doesn’t help when Tim starts peppering kisses all over her body as he travels down towards her waist and hips. Eventually she’s able to get enough sense to reach down and pull his face up towards hers, she leans forward and kisses him yet again, this time it’s a little less demanding but just as passionate as before.
That’s when she gets her next clue that something was off with Tim. As they kiss she opens her eyes up and looks at him, she finds his eyes clenched shut and not in the good a good way. They’re clenched shut so he can’t see what he’s doing, so he can’t see his surroundings, like he’s trying to force himself mentally away from where he actually is.
That’s enough to make her break the kiss. She cups his head and holds it steady as she pulls back. With his eyes still closed he frowns, she even hears him make a confused noise.
“Tim.” She says gently trying to get his attention. He doesn’t look at her. “Tim look at me, please.”
This time he opens and looks down at her, blinking in confusion. “Why’d you stop?” He sounds breathless and genuinely confused.
Steph frowns back at him, no longer feeling aroused as she once was but now feeling concerned. “Because I think we need to talk.”
Above her Tim stiffens up, becoming even more tense than before. She pushes against his shoulder carefully, telling him to let her up. He does so without any words and moves so he’s sat on the edge of the bed, looking down and playing with his fingers. Steph uses this opportunity to climb off the bed and change into her pyjamas but also to collect her thoughts together and to give Tim the chance to do the same.
There’s a feeling inside of her telling her that she knows what is up with him. She really hopes that the feeling is wrong and how it could just be her being slightly paranoid about Tim’s odd behaviour. He goes to the Titans for the weekend and comes back early, which he hardly ever does, and then suddenly seems to be really into having sex with her. That just wasn’t Tim.
She admits that there’s been something bugging her about Tim for a long time, for several months, but she hasn’t paid attention to it because it just didn’t seem necessary, why create fires when you don’t need to. But now it seems like she needs to address this with him and try to work out what’s going on.
She goes back over to the bed and sits down next to Tim, taking on of his hands in both of hers and strokes his knuckles with her thumb in a soft caress. She watches him not look at her at all, watches as he actively avoids meeting her gaze.
They sit together like that for several minutes, but Steph quickly becomes bored of the silence and turns around so she’s sat facing him, curling one leg up underneath her. She squeezes his hand. “What’s going on Tim? What’s with your weird behaviour?”
Tim doesn’t respond to her for a long time, she sees the way he goes still at her question and the way an invisible mask of no emotions appear on his face. Eventually he’s squeezing her hands back, “There’s nothing wrong Steph, I just missed you.”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. She raises an eyebrow unimpressed with his answer because that’s such bullshit, they’ve known each other long enough now that Tim should realise that he can’t bullshit to her like that anymore.
She presses the issue. “Look Tim there has to be a reason why you left the Titan’s early, and not because you ‘missed me’ which by the way is sweet but we both know it’s bullshit. You never leave your team early, especially on your allocated hang out weekends. Something happened didn’t it? What was it?”
Tim still wasn’t looking at her, his eyes were purely down on the ground and his face mostly void of any expression.
“Did one of them get hurt?”
That gets her a quick side glance from him. “What? No. No. Nothing like that. They’re all fine.”
“Then what’s going on Tim?” She couldn’t help how annoyance had slipped into her tone. Tim was so frustrating sometimes, it’s like talking to a brick wall. Well actually a brick wall would probably be more cooperative than her boyfriend right now.
Having had enough of him not looking at her, she releases his hands and grabs his face, forcing him to turn and look at her. As expected Tim doesn’t make eye contact. She squeezes him gently, “Tim what happened?”
When he does finally look at her Steph could see how glassy his eyes looked, like he was going to cry and was trying to stop himself from doing so. The concern in her rockets up and she frowns at him. “I’m sorry Steph I don’t know how but it just happened. I’m sorry I didn’t mean-”
She caresses his face gently, stroking his cheek softly. “Why are you sorry Tim? What did you do?”
A lot was running through her head at that moment but there was no way she could just single out one thought. What had Tim done? What had ‘just’ happened? Why is he almost in tears? Should she be scared? Concerned?
“I – I,” He takes a deep breath and yanks his face out of her hands and buries it in his own with a low groan. When he next speaks it’s all muffled. “Jesus Steph it’s all so fucked up right now.”
Still not knowing what he was on about Steph simply places a hand on his hunched back and rubs her hand up and down trying to offer some form of comfort. After a minute he was speaking again.
“Kon and I kissed Steph.”
Steph does a double take on that. Blinking at him unsure if she heard him right. “You - you and Conner kissed?”
He looks up at her with a mixture of guilt and worry, his eyes were still looking glassy as he blinks at her clearly trying to gauge her reaction to the news.
“Yes. Conner and I kissed.”
“You and Superboy kissed?”
He sits up straight and glares at her annoyed, “Yes Steph, how many more times! Kon and I kissed.”
She carries on blinking at him, trying to work out what she’s feeling about it.
Tim had kissed his best friend and clearly by his reaction it just wasn’t a friendly peck on the cheek like some dudes do. She wants to be annoyed, she wants to be angry at Tim for this. He practically cheated on her, even if it was just a kiss, with his teammate and best friend.
However she finds that she can’t be entirely angry with him because the news wasn’t very surprising, like at all. Tim and Conner had always been close, two peas in a pod type thing. They may not have gotten along with each other when they first met but over time they just became inseparable. Anyone who’s around the two idiots for more than five minutes could see that they share a close bond and connection. It also doesn’t help that Steph could kinda tell that Tim wasn’t entirely straight, she had a feeling that he was at least bi over the last few years after seeing him interact with Conner.
The annoying thing about it is this is exactly what she thought might have happened earlier, she had a feeling that it was something to do with the Titans, something more specifically to do with Superboy.
“Steph?”
She brought out of her head when Tim’s voice breaks through her thoughts. “What?” He gives her a pointed look and she sighs, running a hand through her hair she tells him, “Tim I don’t know what to say to that. I want to be angry, I want to scream and shout at you because you basically cheated on me with your best friend.” She doesn’t miss the expression of guilt and shame that passes over Tim’s face as she talks. “But I’m not entirely surprised by it.”
She smiles at seeing Tim’s shocked expression.
“You’re not the most subtle person in the world Timmy. Anyone could say that you and Conner have a very, very, strong connection. It kinda was only a matter of time before something was bound to happen.”
“It just happened Steph, I wasn’t planning to do it, he wasn’t planning it either, as cliché as it sound it literally just happened. We were just sat down, playing video games and eating pizza when we looked at each other, both of smiling and then – then we were kissing. I don’t know if he leaned in first or if I did but it just happened.”
She watches with rapt attention as Tim talks, watching the way a blush forms on his cheeks as he describes the kiss he had. It was then, as she watches the way his eyes goes distant as he relives the moment of Kissing Conner, that she realises that their relationship just wasn’t there. It wasn’t as it was once before. It hurts her to think it but she knows it true.
“Tim.” She says getting his attention. She reaches out and cups his cheek, smiling softly as his hand overlaps hers. “Do you love Conner?”
There’s a moment of hesitation on Tim’s part but he’s eventually swallowing and nodding his head, when he speaks it’s in a hushed whisper. “I think I do, yeah.”
She swallows the lump that’s formed in her own throat at the quiet admission. “I think you know what’s going to happen now right?” She speaks just as quietly as he did, as if speaking loudly is going to cause some form of explosion to go off.
“Yeah. I hate it, but – but it’s the right thing to do. I don’t want to hurt you anymore Steph.”
“And I want you to be happy.” She could feel her own tears pooling up at the side of her eyes, all of them threatening to fall down as she stares at him.
He nods accepting it. “We’re still friends right? Because I don’t want to lose you Steph, we may not be what we were before but I don’t want to lose you.”
She shakes her head, “Of course we are Tim and no, you’re not losing me, you’re not going to lose me just as I’m not going to lose you alright.”
There’s a pause between them but then Tim is speaking up, whispering once again. “I’m sorry.”
Steph grips his face tighter, “There’s no need to be sorry Tim, feelings and emotions aren’t something you can control. This is probably for the best anyway and at least we’ve sorted it out before it got to far.” She gives him a look then, raising an eyebrow in question, “It was just a kiss you shared right, it didn’t go any further than that?”
That gets him to huff out a laugh, “God no. It was just a kiss. One awkward but excellent kiss. After we split apart we were both in shock, like saying ‘did that really just happen’ before we both quickly parted ways. Knowing Kon he went back to the farm and I came straight here.”
She feels a little relieved that Tim didn’t go all the way with Conner, not that it really makes the situation any better. That’s when something catches her attention. “Wait if you kissed Conner just before coming here, were you going to use me as a distraction? Like having sex with me to try and forget about the fiasco with him?”
“No?” he sounds unsure and she sends him a glare, once again feeling annoyed with him. “Maybe? Okay fine yes. I just thought that the kiss is a one time thing and I thought if I spend a night with you I could get rid of those feelings about Conner, act like they’re never there.”
She crosses her arms scowling at him. “You’re an asshole.” She states firmly. So the sex they were about to have was going to be a distraction for him. Great, that’s just great.
He looks away shamefully and frowns. “Yeah that was really shitty of me, I thought I could just forget about it, but obviously not.”
She narrows her eyes at him before looking away still feeling annoyed at him for that move. “It’s okay.” It wasn’t okay, far from okay, but that’s just how it’s got to be now isn’t it?
A relationship can’t work if it’s only one person putting in the effort. It’s not fair on either party so breaking up is the best option. It’s awful and they hate it but they both know it’s the best option.
She glances at him before looking at the TV in her room. “Since we’re not doing that then and since you’re here, fancy watching a film? We’re still friends after all and like good old buddies we can still hang out and watch crappy movies.”
He smiles at that, “Yeah that sounds good.”
She gets up and chooses a film from her small collection before going to the kitchen to grab a few snacks. What’s happened that night may be awful and not what she expected (or wanted) but it’s for the best. Tim’s heart is beating for someone else and it’s not fair on her to try and pursue a relationship between them when he’s not fully committed to it. At the end of the day, they’re both strong individuals, they can get through this. It may be hard but they’ll somehow manage, she’ll somehow manage.