Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Being back has Kon reeling.

Cassie and Tim both got tangled up in a bunch of messed up shit. Separately, together. Cassie clawed her way out and Kon is so proud of her—of how sturdily she holds herself despite everything, how she falls apart and picks up the pieces, mending the breakages with gold. Even then, Kon can feel the grief radiating off of her in droves when she looks at him or Bart.

They all need—

Kon’s not sure. Time? Space? None of those things feel right, are the perfect salves.

Death is always touted as the apotheosis of tragedy, crediting the loss it induces, the what could we have done differently; why him; I wasn’t there our last conversation meant nothing why him—I couldn’t lose you too—

Kon has always felt out of sync with the rest of the world. Nursed in a womb of tempered glass and born alone but free—free—and standing in a pool of tube fluid as it bled out onto pristine tile. Born fifteen and privately terrified that he would be fifteen forever while his friends all grew up.

Never younger than fifteen and curious about what kind of kid he could have been. Aching from the knowledge that he would never know.

Eighteen and back among the living, the whole world saturated in sun and grief. His friends grew up.

To die really was an awfully big adventure.

Tim has a new alias. Stark against the red of his suit, the pallor of his skin verges on wraith-like. His scaffolding, the only thing keeping him upright is a patchwork of anger and heartache. Ephemeral things that will, one day—tomorrow, next week, years from now—bleed themselves dry.

Kon would know.

Later, when Kon catches Red Robin unawares on a rare, clear-skied night, he looks better. Excited—hopeful, even. Whatever Tim has going on, he dismisses Kon’s offer to help, but when he promises that he’ll hear, he’ll fly right over if Tim ever calls his name, just in case, Tim poses no argument.

He smiles. Fond, closemouthed, and says I know you will.

And then Tim was right. Of course he was. News gets around that the first Batman is alive in controlled trickles, gradual by design.

Afterwards, Kon does not see nor hear from Tim for almost three months.

A Bat that wishes to remain hidden has the will and means to do so, and Kon only tracks the other boy’s heartbeat when the peace of the Kansas countryside becomes overwhelming, when he sleeps in fits and starts, and tells himself that this must be enough for now.

Hardly anyone else knows what Tim is doing, and no one else even has the boy’s number, so Kon knows it’s not personal.

It stings deeply, nonetheless.

When Kon does hear his name, it’s a slow night save for a three-car pileup with no fatalities, leaving Kon cruising above the cauliflower heads of the clouds striated above Metropolis.

It’s not contained within a shout; just a simple, even Kon-El that has Kon blasting off like a shot regardless.

It’s only once his feet touch down onto a long boardwalk stretching along an empty beach that Kon even registers that this isn’t Gotham. Or even the state of New Jersey.

He finds Tim alone in civvies, sitting cross-legged on water-worn bedrock. His clothes are oversized, build hidden under a baggy tee tucked into dark-wash jeans. Waves lap at the shore, some lazy swishes, others with greater enthusiasm, surging up onto moss and scoured stone before retreating back to sea.

“Hi,” Tim greets when Kon comes within a few feet behind his spot. “Thanks for coming.”

Kon moves to sit to Tim’s left, bewildered. “Uh, not that it’s not good to see you,” he says, the pit of worry in his abdomen that he’s built over months finally unfurling as he takes in Tim’s frown, the shadows shaping his frown, “but what’s going on?”

“I drove myself over from Gotham earlier today. The trip took three hours—then I got a motel room a few miles from here and wandered around for a while. I bought a hotdog and a soda and wondered if this beach measures up to Hawaii’s. And then I called you.” Sure enough, Tim is balancing a hollow can of ginger ale on the toe of his sneakers. A hand comes up to his face, scrubbing at dull skin. “Ugh, I haven’t slept in two days. It’s kind of getting to me.”

“Um,” Kon says, perplexed as ever, “what?”

“Does it?”

“What?”

“Measure up,” Tim echoes, expression crinkling as if to add, Keep up, Kon. It’s all precocious Robin. “To the beaches in Hawaii. You lived there for a few months—do you remember what it looked like?”

“Oh,” Kon says. “This is pretty nice.”

Tim hums in acknowledgment, staring ahead into dark waters, in this dark cove lit by starshine. The moon is full and huge and luminous. Just like it had been, the first time he’d ever stepped foot outside.

Hawaii feels like—was literally—a whole lifetime ago. Exactly none of his fondest memories are attached to that place, but he remembers one night where Tim and Cassie and Bart were all piled up in Kon’s mess of a bedroom, and Kon had gushed about how it was still one of the most gorgeous places he’d ever seen. Leave it to Tim to be eerie and thoughtful at the same time.

“Hawaii had tons of palm trees, obviously. There where so many buildings that kept the lights on after sunset you could still see the blue of the shore, sometimes. It was really beautiful.” A thought flickers to life in Kon’s mind: Tim up in the sky with him, admiring a golden coast that glows in the dark, like parchment burning from match-fire. “Tim, what’s going on? Where have you been?”

Tim lays flat on his back, setting the soda can by his waist. Inexplicably, Kon joins him, settling down and placing his hands over his stomach.

“While you—were gone,” Tim starts, and geez, Kon already dislikes where this is going. But whatever this is—it needs to be said, right? Getting rid of the cobwebs of you’ve changed and the I wasn’t there for it and the we used to talk about everything. “While you were gone, I kept wishing I could see you again, somehow—I thought about it all the time. I did fucked up things. Lashed out at people.”

Kon says nothing.

“And then you came back—you told me you believed me when I said Bruce was alive. It… meant more than I can describe. I felt like I was going insane, back then.”

He remembers Tim hunched over, eyes wet, irately tugging at his own hair. Kon too out of his element to do much more than place a hand on his friend’s back for comfort.

“I swear, Kon, that was the only thing that kept me going for a while. That and the chance of getting—Bruce being alive,” Tim continues, rambling on as his heartbeat picked up along with the swirls of anxiety in Kon’s gut. “But then I did it, I kept everyone safe and I got Bruce back to Gotham but then I just. Realized I didn’t plan for anything past that point. I didn’t think I’d make it that far.”

Kon’s thoughts screech to a horrifying halt.

“I made it,” Tim carries on, gulping, “and it was fucking freaky how little I cared that I did. I didn’t care at all.”

Didn’t think I’d make it that far. Didn’t—

“Tim,” Kon says, and his voice trips on the single syllable. He sits up and twists to look at Tim—not Tim, Kon can’t lose anyone either. Especially not like this. “Are you—do you—?”

“No,” Tim fires back, simple and certain. The delivery is so blunt that Kon has to believe him, purely by instinct.

The knot in his chest loosens, even if the tangles aren’t all the way undone. Without the pressure of imminent danger, the eddies of fear exhume a surge of hurt. Clenching his fists, Kon thinks back to their conversation on the roof and how none of it is holding up—this conniving motherfucker really—“You dick,” he hisses fiercely, “you told me you were fine. I thought we were past stuff like this.”

“That… I wasn’t lying to you; I don’t like lying to you. I was fine at that moment,” Tim amends quickly. He’s still staring at the water. “And I wanted that moment to last. Everything was looking up—I genuinely didn’t think I’d crash, especially that hard.”

“Tim,” Kon says, more loudly, and swallows. Breathes in and out. Restarts more level, “You could have—just let us know. We would have understood.”

Tim huffs and gets back into a cross-legged position, but whatever he sees makes his eyes go wide. “Woah, wait, I’m sorry—wait, holy shit your face,” he says, expression going slack with concern. He leans forward, briefly pressing his palm to Kon’s knee. “Hey, I didn’t mean to freak you out. I’m glad I’m here. Well, I am now. I did reach out for help; a few of the other Bats know—”

A particularly violent wave crashes against the rocks, spraying the both of them with saltwater.

Kon recovers first, muttering, “You still look awful.”

“According to you I never look all that great,” Tim quips, wry. “Anyway, I, uh. I’ve started taking some medication? Trying stuff out. It’s been over a month and I think it’s making a difference. And giving me headaches, but whatever.” He wrinkles his nose, shrugging. “Also, I’ve been getting insanely detailed dreams? I can fly in them.”

Tim makes a swooping motion with his hands, imitating a dive.

Kon coughs back a laugh. “O… kay?”

“Look. I wanted to apologize for not being in contact. I’ve been… drifting. Glitchy. The past few months have been a blur; I’m kind of just feeling like a real person again. In a way, I wanted to be better—more… here, the next time you saw me? More real. To have enough of my shit together before I faced anyone again, not be so dead on my feet.”

Kon gives him a glare that could make mincemeat out of this cove; Tim and Cassie are so blatantly cast in the same mould, stubbornly committed to surviving on pure inertia—staying in ceaseless motion. Forgetting that leader and friend are not mutually exclusive time after time.

“Oh. Pun intended?” Tim grinds the heels of his shoes against the ground, drumming his fingertips against the soda can. “Sorry. I had months and crossed a state border and I still never say things quite right. Here; I’ll try again: for someone who said he missed you as much as he did while you were gone, I think I did a bad job of following up. I’m not the only one who’s been through a lot. So. I’m sorry.”

“That,” Kon says, keeping his voice low because that’s the only way it’s going to stay even, “is actually really nice to hear, but none of that explains why you’re in Long Island.”

And apparently spent a while exploring the area until the crowd cleared and the sun set, eating a crappy dinner. Kon knows what tourist hotspots are like thanks to his former hero of Hawaii schtick. Any stall or cart within a three-mile radius is highway robbery with a license. At least Tim isn’t short on cash.  

Tim shrugs. “I wanted to get the vibe right.”

“The vibe,” Kon echoes.

“For when I apologized.” The Duh? is implied. Tim points to the water, as if that explained anything. “You like beaches.”

“Tim, you scared the shit out of me.”

“My bad?”

“And you drove to New York after dropping off the grid for three months to say sorry on a random beach.” Kon doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or hug this guy. In the end, he decides on both, wrapping Tim up in his arms and squeezing. One might call it light strangulation. “Dude, what the hell goes on in your head?”

“Sheesh, what a loaded question,” Tim retorts, bringing his own hands around Kon’s waist. The cadence of his words are aiming for blasé, but his fist is tight where it locks onto the fabric of Kon’s shirt, tense against the small of his back. It speaks for him, smooths over the pockmarks that Tim always struggled with, verbally—I missed you, I missed you I missed you—“And I wasn’t about to book it to Honolulu. Accept this lousy Long Island beach.”

“I’m going to need a jetpack to bridge this canyon in logic,” Kon grouses, holding Tim’s head. “Or a hang glider. Whichever works.”

Tim’s voice is clogging, a touch nasal. Still so sad. “You can fly.” He presses his face into Kon’s shoulder.

“Just buy me a fancy bouquet next time,” Kon sighs. He inhales the smell of kelp and sulfur, thinks of a distant version of himself, the little bird that had broken out of his egg.

The fabric of his sleeve is getting wet.

In the end, Kon can’t find anything more succinct than, “Welcome back, Rob.”

Tim is silent; regrouping.

Then he says, “I said I’d be back.” The words quiver. “I’m just behind schedule.”

They hold each other tight.

____

One year later, Kon is whistling as he glimpses into Tim’s living room, grinning with teeth when Tim reflexively rolls his eyes. “Sweet digs, dude,” he singsongs. “Love what you’ve done to the place.”

Tim’s a sight to behold and Kon doesn’t mean that in a nice way; his hair is sticking out in eleven different places and there’s a butterfly closure pasted on his forehead, fastening a two-inch-long cut closed.

“I said,” Tim hisses, even as he slides the balcony door open to let Kon inside, “what are you doing here—”

Kon shrugs, peeling his jacket off. If I left it up to you, buddy, he doesn’t say, I’d see you once in a blue moon. “Couldn’t sleep. Gotta say, the empty Gatorade bottles really give this place personality.”

“Like you’re one to talk. I’ve seen your room,” Tim snipes back. “And I actually need the electrolytes. What’s your excuse?”

Kon will admit that flying over to Gotham—pollution-addled and sporting the ample disadvantage of, well, being Gotham—on a whim was not one of his best ideas. Clark once offhandedly described this place as a man-made nightmare.

Tim’s initial consternation was all bark and no bite, though, the rise and fall of his chest even and Bat-steady. That tempers down his embarrassment with a few reassuring pats.

“You’re looking better,” Kon says, when the quiet gets to be too much, the lull in conversation too excessive.

Tim says nothing at first, but Kon’s comment makes his expression crack with the beginnings of a smile. The action re-splits his bottom lip, and a fresh droplet of blood oozes out of the cut. Kon promptly dabs it away, sandwiching a cotton pad between his thumb and the skin of Tim’s mouth.

A cool draft is blowing into Tim’s apartment living room, ruffling the vinyl blinds. There’s a lone chair on the balcony, made of steel and coated in rust from months and months of Gotham storms. Propped up against the wall by the couch is Tim’s bo staff, only partially collapsed and damaged with what looks like corrosion marks.

The air smells like camphor and the sour tang of smoke that still clings to Tim’s hair and skin, despite his shower.

It occurs to Kon a moment later that he is definitely cupping Tim’s face. He stomps down the urge to draw his hand back right away—that would make this whole thing real. Kon doesn’t want to do away with Tim’s relaxed posture. It’s rare enough as is. 

This particular cut isn’t big, already a few hours old, so when Kon finally brings the cotton away it’s still bleach-white save for a minor speck of red, the same shade as the pieces of Tim’s Red Robin suit discarded all over the floor.

“Do I?” Tim says, one brow raised as he yanks collar of his shirt down, past the dip of his clavicles and partway to his sternum, revealing a splotch of bruising underneath. “Is the bar that low?”

Kon pointedly averts his eyes; there is raucous snickering at the back of his mind that sounds suspiciously like Bart’s. If he didn’t know any better, he’d think Tim was being coy—but Kon is used to his imagination flouncing off to embarrassingly spurious conclusions.

“You know what I mean,” Kon says, huffing. Tim does look different. He’s lighter, less seventeen and muscle and bones, mechanized by grief. Older—eighteen going on nineteen, broader shoulders, the raincloud over his head clearing away, diffuse. “Though anything is better than that condom cowl.”

Tim nudges him. “Shut up,” he says lightly, “Steph already ribs me enough about it.”

“Well, since your own stylistic choices had you running around as an overgrown Q-tip,” Kon tells him, “I gotta assume she was onto something.”

“Yeah, yeah, extra bad period of my life, questionable choices. Whoop-dee-doo.”

“Questionable is euphemistic,” Kon says, eliciting the muted chortle he was aiming for; Tim’s eyes crinkle. Softer, he adds, “Only up from there, huh?”

“Don’t jinx it.”

It’s disarming; Tim is disarming even when he’s fraying at the edges, hanging on by a thread but this—Tim healthy, Kon close enough to see every bruise and incision Tim picked up from the city tonight, the pale flecks of gray stippled into the steel blue of his irises—is positively accretive.

Kon tends to Tim’s injuries as quickly and carefully as he can, even as he dreads being finished and lacking any viable excuse to be here.

Looking at Tim now, figure backlit by the placid glow of the floor lamp, Kon feels less hollowed-out and bone-tired than he has in a long, long time.

You’re so pretty, Kon lets himself think, gulping hastily when the words begin to creep upwards from his chest, clamouring for escape.  

He clears his throat as he pastes medical tape around a particularly broad injury spanning half of Tim’s forearm. “So what did happen to you?” Kon asks, more a bid to distract himself than out of curiosity. Life is several notches too wack for anything to be a surprise.

“Oh, you know. Underground drug trials. Human subjects doing it for the money or made to stay under duress. A healthy amount of broken glass,” Tim huffs. His socked foot taps rhythmically the floorboards, restless. “Other arm next, please. Start at the elbow. I just need ice and some painkillers for the rest.”

“Yes boss.”

“You’re the one who offered,” Tim counters. Then, startlingly honest, he adds, “I missed you.”

You’re killing me, Kon wants to say. Well, Superboy Prime did kill me. But you’re a remarkably close second, so what do you have to say for yourself?

Whatever.

“You saw me last week,” Kon says. “Trip to Alpha Centauri? Ring any bells? I broke you out of space jail?”

Post-mission, they had decided to make a brief rest stop on a planet populated by amphibious creatures that barely came up to Kon’s waist. For committing some alleged misdemeanor, they put Red Robin in a jar. It had been equally stupid and hilarious.

“What ‘I’? Bart and Cassie broke me out of space jail. You just stood there.”

“I was moral support, you unappreciative ass.” Kon pinches Tim’s nose bridge—unbroken at the moment, but subtly crooked from years of hits and punches—and gets his hand swatted away. “And you’re the one who got arrested in the first place.”

“I have never done anything wrong in my life, ever.”

“News to me.”

Tim’s other arm is a mess of shallow scrapes, overlaid on the troughs and crests of older scar tissue. He doesn’t wince as Kon applies ointment and dresses the wound as clinically as he can using his TTK.

It must sting, but there are too many years of pain under Tim’s belt for him to be fazed over something so minor. Kon isn’t well-acquainted with physical pain like Tim is—not so intimately. And he wonders, if he were more human, if he bled and broke more easily, what patterns would be etched into his back, his skin, his limbs.

When that’s done, Kon does as asked and hovers over to the kitchen for an ice pack from the freezer and a glass of water. “Here you go,” he says, taking the spot on the couch next to Tim.

Tim takes the water with a low Thank you and gulps down his precautionary antibiotics with some Advil. Kon waits for Tim to take the ice pack, too—and he does, after staring at it for a few moments. The condensate adheres to the pads of Tim’s fingers as he crinkles the plastic in his hands, brow furrowed.

Tim sets the ice pack onto the coffee table, next to a wrecked domino. Wipes the excess water off on his pants, averting his eyes. His Adam’s apple bobs.

When they make a grab for the back of Kon’s neck to pull him forward, Tim’s fingers are still cold.

“Can I,” Tim murmurs. And then all Kon can see is Tim’s face—the other man’s eyelids fluttering shut, and then their lips are joined.

Neither of them move for what feels like a very, very long time and Kon’s mind goes very, very still.

Tim keeps his hand on Kon’s nape as he draws back. It’s a cue for Kon to react, recoil, use his voice. Kiss back. It’s only the growing frown on his face that punts Kon’s brain back into working order.

“Huh?” is what Kon ends up saying. He cringes immediately.

Sweet mother of God, he’s a dumbass. He’s going to ram his head through the drywall.

That makes Tim backpedal, mortification marring his face. “Shit,” he hisses, withdrawing, cheeks stained pink even under the dim lighting. “I’m sorry. I thought—we can forget about this. Don’t worry about it.”

“Wait, no,” Kon blurts out. “Sorry.”

“It’s—it’s okay?” Tim says. His expression is stricken, twisted up all weird.

“No,” Kon says again, internally cursing his lack of vocabulary, “I mean—no, sorry. I’m just—rebooting?”

Then it’s Tim’s turn to say, “Huh?”

“Please get back here,” Kon pleads, reaching ahead. “Do that again?”

This time Kon meets him halfway, hand moving to trace Tim’s jawline. Tim’s eyes go huge as understanding filters in, cheek leaning into Kon’s touch—

And they’re kissing each other on the couch, surrounded by Tim’s comically vast catalogue of lemon-lime Gatorade bottles. Tim is making happy, breathless noises that make Kon’s heart sing. His palms run up and down Kon’s triceps; he feels the brush of Tim’s slender hands, his callus-roughened skin. They toy, idly, with the thin golden bands nestled through the cartilage of his helix.

Kon sends a mental shout-out to the series of minor emotional crises he’s had since being resurrected. Getting piercings again was a fantastic call.

“You’re my best friend,” Tim says when he breaks away to catch his breath, his fingers buried in Kon’s hair. For once he looks carefree, starry-eyed. It’s so good. It makes Tim look as young as he is.

“Hm? I thought Batgirl was your best friend,” Kon mumbles.

“I can have more than one best friend,” Tim says, already leaning closer once more.

“Okaaay, Mr. Popular.”

Their lips press together once more. Kon is careful not to grab anywhere he’s spotted a particularly nasty abrasion, avoiding Tim’s shoulders and collar as his hands drift from place to place, exploring.  

Belatedly, Kon realizes that Tim is letting him set the pace; whatever he does, Tim mirrors the action, fingers flexing every time Kon exhales extra hard or makes a noise, as if mentally cataloguing what Kon likes. Methodical nerd.

Testing his theory, Kon licks along the seam of Tim’s lips, careful to avoid splitting the cut open again and lets out a pleased hum when Tim instantly opens his mouth.

Then he tightens the arm he has wound around Tim’s waist; Tim stills, shuffles backwards and Kon, like a loser, whimpers at the loss of contact. It’s fine, this is fine, goodnight is the refrain looping in Kon’s mind; this whole night has already gone far, far better than he could have ever hoped.

But then Tim is manhandling Kon’s legs—he pauses to check in and grins when all Kon can do is nod like a bobblehead in his best approximation of yes, go ahead, what the flipping fuck—so he can climb onto his lap. He seats himself on the plane of Kon’s left thigh, arms looping back around Kon’s shoulders.

Kon is dying.

And then Tim’s mouth is right back to where it was before. Kon’s brain is molasses, melting out of his ears.  

“Conner,” Tim manages when they split again, holding Kon by the neck, hands sunspot warm and tracing his mandible, rubbing lazy circles. He sounds punched-out. His pupils are blown. How long have they been kissing? Touching, to get Tim to sound so wrecked? “Conner. Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Kon croaks, weak to his own ears.

Tim’s hair is sticking out in twelve different places and his exhales have yet to smooth back out. His expression is dazed, a lot less mentally intact than Kon is ever used to seeing, all defenses down.

I did that, Kon thinks giddily, bumping their shoulders. Tim likes him, he likes Kon; Tim wants him.

“Well, hey. That was very cool. A real humdinger,” Kon says, making Tim snort. He kisses Tim’s temple for good measure, next to the butterfly stitches. The first time Tim had gotten a head injury Kon had had to stifle his panic, startled by how fervently it bled. “Oh. You’re so pretty.”

Already flushed all over, Tim chokes out a stunned, wheezing sort of laugh. Kon wants to lock up the sound and have it on repeat during bad days. “Dude, you can’t just say that.”

Tim’s breath hitches when Kon presses their foreheads together—it helps Kon build courage for the words he wants to air out next.

Tim beats him to the punch. He says, “Stay.”  

“So, uh, I’m not complaining or anything,” Kon says later that night, after the all the lights have been switched off, “but why now?”

They’re in bed, tucked under expensive sheets. Tim’s head is nestled under his chin, hair tickling his neck.

“You’re the one who showed up at my apartment in the middle of the night without a heads up,” Tim tells him, going tense. “Wait. You didn’t even mean it as a hint, then? I thought I was reading the room!”

“Eh,” Kon says.

“Kon, do you know what boundaries are? Be honest,” Tim says. The reprimand would probably carry more weight if Tim didn’t cut himself off with his own yawning.

“Boundaries,” he parrots with a laugh. Kon shifts and, like a compulsion, kisses Tim’s crown. “Uh-huh. A Bat’s gonna lecture me about boundaries. Rich.”  

“What if I was asleep?”

“Trick question; I’ve known you for more than three minutes,” Kon says. “Besides, this worked out, didn’t it? This is okay?”

In the dark, Tim fumbles in search for Kon’s hand to intertwine their fingers. He squeezes.  

They sleep.

The sun isn’t even up yet when Kon rouses to the noisy clamour of footsteps from beyond the bedroom door.

This is alarming for two reasons:

One, even after life has put Tim through the wringer, ultra-heavy duty spin cycle—and other handy-dandy euphemisms for wow, life sucks balls; you good, dude? and all the terror that kind of life invites—once Tim dozes off, he refuses to stir for anything short of the apocalypse.    

Two, if it’s not Tim, the alleged sole permanent resident of this apartment walking around then that means someone circumvented a Gotham Bat’s security system.

The gait of whoever is pacing—and swearing under their breath, rifling through the drawers—around Tim’s apartment belongs to someone bulky, if the force of each stride is anything to go by.

Kon grabs Tim, who is still star-fished across the bedspread by the shoulders. Tries to shake him awake. “Tim. Rise and shine.”  

If the noises sounding Tim is making are meant to be actual words, they’re unintelligible, buffeted by layers of cotton and sleep.  

“Tim, Tim. Red,” Kon says, persistent. He jostles Tim around like a floppy noodle. “Rob. Reddy Robbie.”

“Wh—sleepin’,” Tim slurs, curling into himself. “Don’t care.”

“You should. There’s someone in your apartment,” Kon explains.

“Ugh.” Tim pushes himself upright, glaring at the wall like Kon has ruined his week and taking his sweet time rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his palms. “Skunk.”

Tim throws the door open, Kon lingering right behind him.

It’s the Red Hood, sans helmet, inky hair pressed at odd angles from sweat. He’s crouched by the drawers of Tim’s oak TV system, a pile of displaced medical supplies growing as he digs through Tim’s stuff.

“Jason.”

“Top of the morning, baby bird,” Hood greets, not looking up from where his arms are buried in rolls of medical tape and blankets. “Where the hell did you put your antibiotics? I ran out and took a dip into Miller Harbor. Would really rather not get pneumonia. I feel like I need six tetanus shots—ahah, found ‘em.”

“Those’re mine, get your own,” Tim says, the sentence a toneless smear of vowels. “I’m the immumo—immunocompromised one.”

Hood finally turns around, and if he’s puzzled in the slightest by Kon standing right behind where Tim is slumped against the doorframe, peering over his shoulder, it doesn’t show.

“Respectfully: finders keepers, losers weepers.” Hood shakes the bottle of pills in his hand like a maraca and barks out a raspy laugh when Tim flips him the bird. “Damn, Tim, what crawled up your ass and died?”

“Technically, you,” Tim says, jaw unhinging as he yawns.

Hood blinks.

He only says, “Walked right into that one,” as he stands up and brushes imaginary dust off his cargo pants. Interestingly, he also starts swiping up the mess he made and dumping it back where they belong once the meds are in his pocket. “Oh, yeah. I compiled all the files for the Ruggiero case.”

From his back pocket, Jason fishes out a flash drive sealed in a plastic bag and chucks it. His aim is perfect; it bounces off Tim’s forehead dead center and hits the floor with a faint clunk.

“Thanks. I’m going back to sleep. Bye,” Tim announces, wasting not another second retreating back into the bedroom, sidestepping Kon on the way.

This leaves Kon standing alone and watching as Jason re-ties his boots by the balcony. He took them off before breaking in. That’s actually fairly polite.

Jason rises to his full height, taking a moment to admire his lacework and fix his helmet back on before reaching for his grapnel. Glancing over to Kon, he says, voice tinny through the modulator, “Your shirt’s inside out.”

Kon could feasibly cleave planet Earth in half with enough willpower and elbow grease. He is a juggernaut. He gets years of his life shaved off right then and there.

And then Hood is gone. Kon wants to scream.

To the now vacant living room, he grumbles, “At least I knocked.”  

____

Kon slides his fingers along the worn leather stretched across Tim’s back. He’s got one hand tracing the S symbol embroidered in bright thread, the other under Tim’s shirt, following the divot of his spine. The tacky 90s monster movie playing on TV is being dutifully ignored in favor of an armful of boyfriend.

They’ve been doing this for a while now, catching each other at the end of Titans business and in the rare snatches of time where they’re both free. Tim is leagues more tactile than Kon had originally anticipated—he never came off as the type. Especially this Tim, far more world-weary than the one who wore emerald green.

The traitorous part of Kon’s mind that had a propensity for fucking off to delusionville always presumed Tim would be a bit more reserved, would need more time to relax into the motions of a relationship.

But Kon had also pegged Tim as straight. So.

As it turns out, Tim is very into cuddling. Tim is a proactive, efficient sonuvabitch. There’s already an emerging pile of Kon’s clothes in the corner of Tim’s closet. He has a toothbrush. A preferred mug. Tim slipped Kon’s jacket over his shoulders.

To which Kon can only say: fucking superb.

In retrospect, Kon has known Tim nearly his whole life; this isn’t a sudden, spur of the moment fling. If this is how Tim acts when he’s dead serious about someone, Kon welcomes it.

The world is narrowing down to the sounds of Tim’s sighs and Kon’s blood supply is very much leaving the top floor when Tim breaks the kiss. He feels a hand splay across his chest and push, gentle but firm.

Kon scooches back with a pout. Upon seeing Tim looking troubled, he retracts his hands all the way, letting them drop to the side and asks, “What’s on your mind?”

“Uh,” Tim says, trailing off with a mumble. Uncomfortable, he purses his lips, eyes dropping to his lap.

“Hm? What was that?”

Tim visibly forces the statement out. “I’m gay. Or—something. Bisexual? I’ve dated girls but. I—you. I like you.”

He’s not quite sure what Tim is getting at, but Kon rolls with it. “Well, this is sudden,” he teases. “Though I can’t blame you—have you seen me?”

“No.”

“No, you haven’t seen me? You’re in for a treat, then.”

“No—I mean—” Tim runs a hand through his hair, brows knitting together with frustration. “It’s just. I’ve—never said it out loud.”

Oh. Oh damn, okay. Without thinking, Kon slides a hand under Tim’s jaw and props his chin up, silently urging Tim to look at him.

“For real?” Kon says. “I mean, that’s totally fine.”

“I’ve never told anyone.”

An earlier conversation about not telling anyone—wanting to figure stuff out, away from prying eyes suddenly makes abundantly more sense beyond the Tim is a private person avenue. Kon had been so dizzy with the excitement of having Tim the way he wanted, with all the affection that had evolved so gradually than Kon hadn’t even noticed until he was neck-deep that he had… conceivably forgotten the real world existed.

Evidently, Tim had not. Again, he’s not the type.

“That’s okay,” Kon says. “And it’s not like I’m leaps and bounds ahead of you, anyway; you’re the first guy I’ve ever been with too.”

“I don’t think my family would react badly, or anything. They’re not like that,” Tim rattles on, “but my parents, you know, whenever they were actually there, and just people in general—I didn’t grow up hearing nice things about. Um. People like us. I don’t think anyone does. With the Gotham elite it’s all about propriety and like, staying in your lane.”

“Uh-huh,” Kon says. The explanation is disjointed, like Tim doesn’t even know where to begin, but Kon, by fortunate coincidence, isn’t straight either. Whatever Tim lobs at him clicks into place well enough.

“I never let myself think about it too hard.”

“And now you have to,” Kon concludes.

“And now I have you.” Tim drums his fingers against his kneecaps, slowly. “Uh, Cassie and Bart know you’re bi.”

“Ma does, too,” Kon adds.

“Really?” There’s genuine surprise in Tim’s voice, and it meanders around Kon’s chest. “Oh. Wow. Does it get easier? Telling people.”

“Depends,” Kon replies, carding through Tim’s hair. It’s getting scruffy. His boyfriend sighs softly as they lean into each other. “Everyone’s different. Cassie and Bart were easy, if that’s the right word. I was way more nervous with Ma, but Clark and Lois have both done editorials for Pride in the past and she reads all the Planet’s stuff, so… I wasn’t going in blind, or anything. And it’s not like it’s a rite of passage, or that once you tell one person, everyone else has the right to know. Or that you have to work on some sort of schedule.”

“I know,” Tim intones without any heat. He’s clearly thinking hard; Kon doesn’t need super-hearing to know the gears in Tim’s skull are turning at breakneck speed. “Nice speech, though. Where’d you get those lines from?”

He’s teasing, but Kon confesses, “Dinah makes me work towards my conclusions, but she does help me brainstorm.”  

She’s been good to him; Kon is less and less nervous dialing her number every time.

“And hey,” he says. “It’s our relationship. You’re not letting me down. Don’t think that.”

In the short few years he’s been alive—born as nothing more than a means to an end, being used, hurting people—Kon understands that living quietly is no less valuable than at the top of your lungs.

He’d love to tell Ma. Loves imagining Tim in the cozy kitchen of the Kent farm as his boyfriend, making idle talk, blearily spreading homemade jam on homemade sourdough. 

Tim shakes his head. “You’re important to me,” he says. “I need you to know this isn’t…” he gestures to himself with a flick of the wrist. “Like I’m ashamed, or anything. Of myself. And never of you. I just—don’t know how? This whole—being…”

“Gay,” Kon supplies. “Or whatever it is you are.”

“That,” Tim says, so awkward. “I don’t hate it. I like that I like you. But when I think of telling other people I feel—I don’t know. Vaguely uncomfortable? That made, uh, very little sense. Sorry.”

He looks at Kon, finally, for signs of offense. But he keeps his face as even as he can and smiles, all affection, when Tim holds him by the nape again, pressing their foreheads together.

“You came out to me,” Kon says. “Congrats. Progress?”

“I’m not sure it counts when I’m sitting on your lap,” Tim parries, deadpan.

Kon puffs out his chest. “Best seat in the house, broski.”

A groan. “I hate you.”

Kon snorts and pecks Tim’s temple. “What?” he asks, smug. “You wanna move off?”

Tim glowers, but doesn’t budge. Thought so.

Neither of them speak for a while until Kon says, “Do you have anyone in mind? Aside from Jason, since we told him already.”

Told is a very strong word.

“He hasn’t mentioned it. Or been acting any different. I definitely like it that way.” Tim shrugs, moving to rest his head on Kon’s shoulder. On the TV screen, a reptilian beast is shot down by lasers. “Bart and Cassie, obviously. Though they probably already know something is up. Dick. Steph. My Cassandra. I’ll work my way up to Bruce and Alfred eventually—uh, it’s not like they’re worse, but…”

“Batman’s your dad,” Kon says. Conner’s no Red Robin, but he’s not stupid; he’s less prone to getting sorry, raincheck? :( on nights when Bruce Wayne is abroad for business or, even better, when Batman is off-world. Red Robin is a highly active vigilante on his own and thus understandably busy—and Kon has his own shit to do, too—but the trends are consistent enough not to be a coincidence.

But it’s not done out of fear, and that eases the weight.  

“Mm,” Tim agrees.

Conversation tapers off again. Kon tunes back into the movie, where the monster’s acidic blood digests steel beams and concrete. The special effects are atrocious. He moves on, listening to the flow of water through pipe, the shouts and honks of activity of Gotham’s streets, until:

“Hey, Superboy?”

“Yeah, Rob?”

“I like guys.”

Kon gasps, clutching his chest. “My word!”

Tim clicks his tongue.

“Thank you,” he exclaims, stifling a giggle and grabbing his boyfriend’s limp hands, “so much for trusting me with this moment, for letting me accompany you on this personal journey, this is such an honour—”

Tim headbutts him and Kon laughs harder.

I’m so excited to love you, he thinks, lacing their fingers together.

____

Kon arrives in Gotham as the local time approaches two in the morning, having been busy himself with a bad landslide in California. Cleanup and rescue had taken hours, even with Conner holding up crumbling structures with his TTK while Clark and Kara hauled people out. The Titans are meeting at their New York HQ in the morning, so he and Red Robin might as well show up together.

He happily watches Red Robin wreck people’s shit for a few minutes before whistling to grab his attention.  

Back in Tim’s apartment, Kon uses his TTK to loosen all the buckles and latches of the Red Robin suit. Tim’s bo clatters to the floor as he shucks off his cape and utility belt. With a light kiss as thanks, he slinks away to fetch a change of clothes while Conner lingers in the living room.

Tim had completed a few patrol circuits in the six hours he had spent doing rounds in his sections of Gotham, also stopping through areas normally delegated to Batgirl. Stephanie has midterms, and Tim doesn’t. So fair enough?

The Bats, save the actual Bat, have a protractive bartering system going on; Tim will comb through case evidence for Stephanie because he owes Cassandra a favour, and the hours are apparently transferable.

Or something. How do the conversion rates work? Are there transaction fees? Do they charge interest?

Most things in the apartment are unchanged from Kon’s last visit nearly a fortnight ago, save a strange-looking light fixture set up in next to the couch. It’s a sleek rectangle propped up by a thin metal stand, vaguely reminding Kon of fancy soft-box lighting equipment he’s seen on TV sets.

Tim had said he used to love photography before adopting the Robin mantle. Maybe now that life has settled—as much as it can, for people who fight crime in colorful costume and jetset off to space every now and then—Tim is picking the hobby back up.

“It’s a sun lamp,” Tim explains once he’s back, the skin around his eyes faintly pink from the adhesive of his domino. He crouches down, fiddling with one of the knobs until the front panel is shining such a brilliant white it makes his eyes prickle. “What do you think?”

If Tim is asking for Kon’s opinion about a lamp, of all things, it must be important. His thoughts snag on the name. “A sun lamp?”

“Yeah.” Tim offers a small smile. “Since it’s always you coming over, working around my schedule and I live in Gotham.”

Kon’s eyes flicker to Tim, and then back towards the glow of the sun lamp. “I have hypersonic speed?”

“It’s not that,” Tim says. “I mean that it’s Gotham, as in rains here pretty much half the time.”

Tim pats the edge of the device, hand engulfed by a giant sleeve. His hoodie pretty much swamps his frame, meeting the hem of his shorts.

“There were light boxes that also gave off UV radiation, but I figured picking one that emits minimal UV would still theoretically work the same way since the ozone layer doesn’t interfere with a Kryptonian’s ability to absorb solar energy,” Tim continues. “I don’t know how good of a substitute something like this is, to be honest. But worth a shot, right?”

“What,” Kon says. “This is for me?”

A nod. “You know how you mentioned during wintertime you’d get worn out more quickly than usual?”

Kon hums. The first year of his life was riddled with mood swings so closely clustered together everyone, including Kon himself, had chalked it up to him being capricious. Unstable.

The ache of rejection, being taken advantage of, not being what he had been programmed to be—would worsen when daylight hours grew shorter, gray with dirty snow. 

“Um,” Tim says, nervousness creeping through the line of his shoulders at Kon’s silence, “it’s—well. You know what’s funny? Gotham’s a pretty unique case study—we have some of the highest rates of depression in the country. Which is basically saying grass is green, but… weather and exposure to sunlight can be a key factor to alleviating or exacerbating your symptoms.”

Still, Kon says nothing, laying his hand flat on the panel of the lamp. It’s already warm, buzzing with energy.

Kryptonians derive their power from yellow stars. Of course.

“So, these sun lamps,” Tim babbles on, “are used as a type of therapy, and I thought, what if the whole sunlight thing carries over to Kryptonian physiology, especially since you’re half human—”

“Tim,” Kon says.

“I should have asked—run the idea by you first, but I wanted it to be a surprise,” Tim declares, “it’s okay if this is kind of intrusive, I was being presumptuous—”

Kon turns around and scoops Tim up, the action punctuated by a squeak that would be perfect teasing fodder if—if Kon wasn’t too busy smiling his face off to utter a single word.

Strong legs lock around Kon’s waist right away, an automatic response. Kon floats and settles them both down onto the couch, Tim’s back pressed against the seats. Arms bracketing either side of Tim’s ribs, their mouths meet in a chaste kiss.

Another kiss to the lips. A silly, clumsy one on the chin, one, more drawn-out, along the column on Tim’s throat. Between his brows. The tip of his nose. Lips again. One for each swoop of cheekbone.

Tim is a giggling mess by the time Kon pulls away, skin adopting a fierce blush. “I take—” he pants, “that you don’t hate it.”

“Goodness. Does your investigative prowess have no limit,” Kon says. “There can only be one explanation: did you train under the so-called World’s Greatest Detective, by any chance?”

Tim’s eyes roll to the back of his head.

“Thank you,” Kon says, sincere.

“It’s no big deal,” Tim says. He opens his mouth to say something else and trails off when he surges up for another kiss. Kon dodges, laughing, as Tim chases him sloppily, the both of them still a tangle of limbs. Eventually Tim gets his lips to land on, ridiculously, Kon’s hairline, but he’s seemingly satisfied and drops back down into the cushions.

“I love it. You’re the best. You’re so good.” He presses his lips to Tim’s cheek. “Mwah.”

Tim is beetroot red. Ripe strawberry. Firetruck. Tomato. Kon’s senses pick up on Tim’s elevated heartbeat; the heat suffusing into his cheeks. “There’s no concrete way to know if it helps, but if you think it makes a difference, we could get light boxes for your room in Kansas or even at the Tow—ooh. No hickeys so high up, dude. It’s not turtleneck season yet.”

“Aw, okay.”

Tim yawns.

“Geez, am I boring you? Me? Superboy? Putting you to sleep?” Kon says, and Tim merely hums in response.

“Why do you… say Superboy in that,” Tim mumbles, “font.”

Making a show of fake coughing, Kon says, “Ahem. Superboy.”

“Eugh.”

Kon shifts, brushing a few of Tim’s black locks out of his face. Feeling completely sentimental. “You’re still sweaty from patrol. We have to be up early—you should take a shower, and then we can sleep?”

Tim arches a brow at him, blinking slowly. “Hmm. Remember when you used to be disgusting and showered, like, once a week? Bart would complain to me about how badly you smelled like old socks and hockey locker room.”

“Whaaat, Bart said I smelled like roses.”

“Sorry to break it to you, but Bart’s a lying liar. ‘Robin. Hygiene,’ he would say. ‘Push. Hygiene. Serious. Save him,’” Tim recounts, a glint in his eye. His nose scrunches as he lets out another wide yawn. “Mn. No wonder I figured you were straight.”

“Darling dearest, honey-boo, you are rude as shit.”

“Yuh-huh, speaking of shit—mmph.”

____

A merry band of thunderstorm clouds are raining down on Gotham, the huge, billowing gust fronts migrating East, towards the coast. Water is hammering down on the city, carried by gravity and downbursts of wind.

The Kent farm, over a thousand miles west, is located smack in tornado alley; Tim’s place feels more insulated from rainfall than Kon is used to, accustomed to the metallic pitter-patter, pitter-patter of rain and hail against flimsier roofing. His apartment is made from the remnants of an industrial warehouse, the building itself easily a century old, erected in now-eroded stone. Gotham infrastructure, after all, must be stubborn enough to brave consistently harsh weather; it is shelter, a gag to mute the cacophony of the outside world so long that you remain within its walls.

Beneath it all, it’s the hallmark of a city that wants to survive. And miraculously, with a few dollops of internal intervention, it has.

They’re sitting together in Tim’s makeshift dining area—a table pushed against the kitchen boundary, gradually making it through a two-pizza dinner. While Tim watches surveillance footage, leisurely scribbling notes onto a legal pad, Kon tries to make sense of Macbeth.

Is a GED really worth it? He and his weapons grade ass don’t deserve this.  

The sun lamp is on, placed a few feet away from Kon’s spot at the table. It does make Kon feel more buoyant; lighter. Is the happy lamp working? Is Tim the happy lamp?

He slides the beaten copy of the play over to where Tim his hunched over his laptop, still dressed in work slacks and a crinkled button-down. He triple-taps one of the lines, coinciding with the boom of thunder outside.

“What, you egg,” Tim reads with red-rimmed eyes, pushing his glasses back up. It’s been too long of a day to keep contacts in. “I should use that line the next time I get stabbed.”

“I don’t know words,” Kon whines, tapping his temple. “There’s nothing going on up here. The lights are on but no one’s home.”

Tim’s bark of laughter is interrupted with a buzz of his phone, the screen illuminating with a text notification. The warmth in his eyes shutters and his face goes blank, unreadable.

“Who is it?” Kon asks.

Tim breathes deep, the pads of his thumbs flitting rapidly has he types. “Cass texted,” he says. “Uh—my Cassandra texted. She wants to use the shower? The one in my apartment.”

“Oh. Oh shit. Well, uh—I can go,” he offers, watching Tim press send. His eyes remain glued to the screen, so Kon adds, “Wow. You know, your sister and I had a bit of a thing?” Briefly, more out of mutual curiosity than actual attraction. Oh, God. He called her Bat-babe that one time and now he’s dating her brother; he’d do well with being conveniently poleaxed, right now. “She’s pretty great. She broke into my house once, and I yelled so loudly I had to lie to Ma about having nightmares.”

Tim looks up, squinting at him. “Thanks,” he says, “for the extremely topical information.”

“I can go?” he suggests again. “Or cling to the ceiling until she leaves.”

Tim’s face scrunches up, and Kon assumes that’s his cue to make an exit before the Black Bat pops in through the windows. Cassie and Bart already know, after a weekend spent together in the Tower. It’s been a long time since the four of them were about keeping things from one another—at least not indefinitely—but Tim’s family is his business.

A hand grips Kon’s shoulder. The accompanying words are uncertain; “You… you can stay here, if you want.”

Oh. Kon’s expression is hopefully a reassuring one. “Okay.”

Chapter Text

Cassandra is a shivering, wet mop of hair and body armour by the time she slips in through the balcony, dripping puddles of water all over the floor. Stray locks of hair are pasted over her face, cheeks flushed from the cold. Her suit—jet black with a golden bat emblazoned over the chest plate—has a few scratches and tears, but she looks otherwise uninjured.

Spotting the two of them, she crooks her head to the side.

Tim grabs Kon’s hand and twines their fingers together.

“Hi, Cass,” Kon greets, waving. “S’been a while.”

Cassandra extends her fingers, thumb crossed over her palm.

Tim mimics the gesture, and she grins back at her younger brother, honey-warm. Extending both arms, Cass attaches her wrists together at the hilt and crooks the fingers of both hands. Her fingertips tap together thrice. Whatever it means, Tim laughs as he makes three broad strides towards her, kissing Cass’s cheek before nudging her towards the washroom with a mumble of, “Go wash up.”

When she’s out of sight, Tim repeats the waving action. “She was signing,” he says. “This means ‘Hello.’”

Kon tries it too; it’s like a little salute. “Cool.”

Then he does the same clawing motion, forearms pressed together. “And this one means ‘crocodile.’”

Kon winces. Stinky, horrible Gotham.

“I’m gonna thaw out some food for her. She’ll mutilate our pizza if I don’t.”

Tim’s kitchen is shockingly well-stocked, the freezer compartment in particular filled to capacity with parchment-wrapped sandwiches and containers, all labelled in neat cursive Kon suspects is Alfred’s handwriting. They even have best before dates.

This fact is conspicuously at odds with the sheer amount of takeout Tim eats.

(Tim also just hates doing the dishes, and bypasses the problem entirely by ordering in. Plenty who know Tim exclusively on the field may be under the assumption that Red Robin is the perfect type A specimen, but Kon knows better. Kon is regular young adult messy. Tim would rather deal with a prison breakout than wash a pan. “I’m supporting local businesses, Kon,” his ass.)

“My apartment is in an accessible part of the city, I guess. They just… manifest every so often,” Tim had said the first time Kon opened the fridge door to find it filled with an assortment of junk:

Food Tim doesn’t go near because it’s stickied with Don’t eat (unless this is Cass, but you’re on thin ice) – Steph, condiment jars that have their own ecosystems, the occasional blood sample pushed to the back of the top shelf, and a petri dish carrying a mound of… something. An avocado.

Tim ought to invest in a minifridge unit and put it in his study, where the remainder of his personal Batty lab setup is.

Tim sticks a tray of frozen lasagna into the oven as the sound of running water fills the suite and moves on to rifle through the pantry. He’s not impossible in a kitchen setting, but Tim also didn’t know he had a stand mixer in his own apartment until Kon was trying to make them both breakfast one morning. 

“You should tell Martha,” Tim says, picking up a chocolate bar. For Cassandra, probably. He frowns as he reconsiders his phrasing. “If you want to?”

“We have to have dinner with Ma at some point,” Kon blurts out the moment his brain makes sense of the words, and then what he’s been imagining for ages bursts out of him, unbidden. He’s a pipe succumbing to an excessive internal pressure. “Krypto splits his time between me and Jon and Kara, but he has a huge soft spot for you and will show up guaranteed. We can go to the lake. There’re tons of ducks there we can feed, with cracked oats or grapes, because bread is insanely bad for them. Oh, and break some cattails for fun.”

Once, when Kon had been angry and sad and a whirlwind of emotions no one ever taught him how to cope with, Pa had hauled him to the pond. They’d collected a big pile of cattails—close to a hundred—and Kon learned it was hard to stay mad when downy fluff is exploding all over your hands. Good things are often simple.

“We should,” Tim answers, smiling.

With a grin, Kon floats out of his seat, drifting to where Tim is standing in the kitchen. Their foreheads touch, Kon midair and upside-down. “Also, good for you. That’s one family member down. Two, technically.”

“Two,” Tim agrees, ducking and grabbing Kon by the ankle.

Letting Tim drag him out of the kitchen area like an oversized balloon, Kon comes to a realization. “Tim, wait—your sister knows we’re together.”

“Um, yeah?”

Still weightless, left calf slung over Tim’s shoulder, he says, “Dude. C’mon. She has to approve of me. Gimme tips. A better glimpse into her psyche.”

Tim doesn’t reply, obviously deep in thought as he places the chocolate onto the table, next to his laptop. Bored, Kon’s face goes full Cheshire cat as he turns the gravity back on—not entirely, but enough that Tim’s knees buckle under the sudden weight—

“Trust fall!”

“Woah—!” Tim yelps on his trip towards hard linoleum, right as Kon rotates to catch him. Once he regathers his bearings, he says, “One, you’re a jackass. Two, do you want to learn a bit of ASL? Cass always takes her sweet time in the washroom; I can probably teach you a few basic signs. She’d love that.”

The Bats initially learned ASL as a mode of communication that Cassandra would find more intuitive than spoken language—but it had soon proven useful for patrolling; signing kept things silent during stakeouts or ambushes.

“On top of that, you’ll never know when you’ll run into someone hearing impaired or non-verbal,” Tim explains, already switching into training exercise mode as they sit criss-cross applesauce on the living room floor. Kon follows Tim’s hands as his pointer finger swoops in a small arc; are you hard of hearing? Are you deaf?

Yes. No. My name is K-O-N E-L. S-B. I know a little sign.

Spelling his name is the hardest; Kon has to sign each letter in quick sequence, but he gets the hang of it in the hour Cass spends in the washroom—Tim really wasn’t kidding when he said she liked long showers. This beats Elizabethan English, anyway.

The deluge of rain continues outside, unrelenting and livid. Kon has practiced a good fraction of the alphabet by the time Cass steps out in some of Tim’s clothes, scrubbing waterlogged hair with a towel. 

Kon waves and carefully signs with a twist of his knuckles, How was your day?

Cass tilts her head and signs no with a shake of her head. Kon snorts.

In the time it takes for Tim to get Pacific Rim queued up, Cass gets her hands on her lasagna and practically inhales half the pan.

“Killer Croc is… a hassle.”

He’ll take her word for it.

Cass returns her attention to her pasta and gets some sauce on her shirt in her fervour; she yanks at the fabric and scowls at the new stain. In a show of solidarity, Kon grabs a now-cold slice of pizza, taking a few bites. Tim’s clothes are a bit big on her just by virtue of him being several inches taller, but she’s not drowning in them.

“You got beefier, Cass,” he comments.

“Thank you.” Cass nods sagely, the clump of noodles on her fork sliding back onto her dish. She swipes her lips with a napkin. “I’m very jacked.”

“Still a lightweight, though?”

Cass sticks out her tongue.

Tim comes back with popcorn as the movie opens, sandwiching himself between his sister and Conner on the couch. He’s stiff, posture rigid, nails going tip-tap taptaptap on the rim of the bowl perched on his lap.

Kon does a cost-benefit analysis on putting an arm around Tim’s shoulders to encourage him to relax; he feels kind of bad that Tim is still so stressed, but the way he’s focusing at the screen so hard is… cute.

Instead, he settles for breaking open a can of ginger ale, taking a chug right as Cass reaches for a handful of popcorn. She says, “Conner was my first kiss.”

Kon doesn’t do something drastic like a spittake, but his drink refluxes at the back of his throat, back-splashing into his windpipe; he gags loudly enough to drown out the TV. Tim is staring at Cass while Kon hacks into the crook of his elbow.

She pops another kernel into her mouth and adds, “That helped me learn—I don’t like kissing boys.”

When the puzzle piece slots into place Kon has to draw on the breathing exercises Tim once made the Titans spend a slow afternoon perfecting.

Oh, she absolutely made that dramatic pause on purpose. Oh yeah. Let Superboy choke for effect. Sure. The whole Bat colony is full of smug bastards. “Oh my God,” he says, laughing now, “So glad to be of service.”

Cassandra beams.

“Um,” Tim squeaks, death-gripping the popcorn bowl. Kon pities the glass.

“Timothy,” Kon drawls, poking his boyfriend, “your sister just stole your thunder.”

Tim purses his lips. Cass, eyes sparkling, covers her mouth to smother her own giggles. It’s not even that funny, but Tim, looking like he’s entered the twilight zone—turning his head rapidly between the two of them, gaping—is enough to make Kon lose it, setting his can on the coffee table before doubling over.

“Oh, that’s amazing. Tim, please be supportive. Say thank you for—” he has to pause to breathe, “—thank you for trusting us for this moment.”

“Well—uh—”

“Repeat after me: ‘It is an honor to be one of your trusted’—”

“Um.” Tim has some error 404 going on.

“What’s up with the hesitation, pal?” He plucks Tim’s fingers off the bowl, one by one, his other hand kneading lightly into Tim’s shoulder blade. “You homophobic or something?”

“No—no. I don’t have a problem with gay people.”

Tim, you are a gay people, Kon thinks. Fuck this; his boyfriend is adorable.

“Cassandra, what if my boyfriend is homophobic?” He furrows his brows in an exaggerated display of concern, topping it off with a pout. “That’s a deal-breaker for sure.”

Cassandra snorts and then they’re cackling again as Tim gradually processes.

“Oh. That’s cool, Cass,” Tim murmurs, a good minute later.

Kon hums. “No sparks flew,” he says to Cassandra, “but it was a fun date, right?”

He’d taken her flying across the Kansas flatland, nothing like the arches and dips of Gotham grayscale. He’d tried quite hard to impress her, especially after embarrassing himself so many times, using his TTK to shape the clouds overhead into a castle.

“Yes,” Cass agrees, propping her head against her palm, elbow digging into the couch backrest. She’s glancing at Tim, who is rosy-cheeked. “I made a friend. Very chatty. Sweet. Fun.”

“Why thank you, madam. I’m flattered.”

She signs something too quickly for Kon to decipher—his vocabulary is extremely limited anyway—and Tim deflates all the way, half-slumping onto Kon’s chest.

“You look happier,” Cassandra says, searching for her brother’s hand. She grabs it and squeezes. “I like seeing you happy.”

They restart the movie because a masterpiece like Pacific Rim deserves to be treated with respect, and Cassandra breaks off part of her chocolate bar to share with Kon. Tim dozes off halfway through the film, legs across Cass’s lap and head on Kon’s shoulder.

“Afraid,” she tells Kon. Onscreen, an infant Kaiju engulfs the mob boss whole. A flash of lightning illuminates the sky outside. The rain continues to pour. “That we would think… differently of him. Worse.”

Kon glances to where Tim’s cheek is smushed against his arm, hair in his face and breathing smoothly. The beat of his heart is fixed and unhurried; Tim is in a deep sleep, glasses askew, unbothered by the noises outside and the shouting on the TV.

Knowing his big sister is like him would definitively crush that fear—at least between the two of them. Tim’s mind tends to wander, always dreaming up unsavory outcomes. It’s necessary in their line of work, but—what a burden.

Kon knows Tim will cherish his memories of tonight—the rumble of thunder, pizza and Cassandra and a cheesy giant monster-slash-giant robot flick. And him. He will wake in an hour or so, disoriented and at ease.

He passes the popcorn bowl back to her. “You’re cool, Cass.”

“Yes,” she says. “You’re not bad either.”

____

It’s over plates of microwaved leftovers for breakfast that Tim says, “Hey, we should go on a date.”

Kon doesn’t bother swallowing his mouthful of food as he answers with a muffled, “Have we… not been on dates?”

“I mean, outside? In public. Where the public is there.”

Wow, they’re really doing stuff out of order, aren’t they?

“Oooh,” Kon says, fascinated. “For real? Not like I’m not all for it, but you look like you ate a lemon.”

“This is orange chicken.” He spears another piece. “And yes, I’m sure.”

“Sure, romance my pants off, lemon man,” Kon says, doing his damned best to ignore the mounting static in his chest. Be cool, Conner. “Hey, are you telling me the time we made out at the back of a Subway didn’t count?”

“I’m not a one-trick pony.”

____

here, Tim writes.

Kon slides his cellphone back into his pocket and bounds down the stairs, jogging past the crowd of people stumbling around for their bags.

When he makes it past the main exit of the testing facility and into Metropolis daylight, Kon’s already exhausted brain shorts out.

Parked by the curbside, legs straddling a motorcycle is Tim, preoccupied with unlocking the trunk to pull out a second helmet.

Kon would sprint over to do something dumb like pick Tim up and twirl them around—and he’s tempted to—if it weren’t for the fact that the Waynes are a popular tabloid topic. Sure, being in Metropolis lends Tim a sliver of anonymity, but the media are fiends. 

He decides to go with commenting on how Tim is totally stealing his aesthetic by driving a sweet ride when Kon is the brick shithouse guy. The remark dies at the tip of his tongue when Tim steps forward and yanks him into a tight hug. 

“Hi,” Tim greets.

“Hah. Hi,” Kon says, his insides an over-roasted marshmallow. All ooey-gooey and far too sugary to be tolerable. “Tell me about it—”

Ever the detective, Tim catches on mid-sentence and glares.

“Stud,” Kon sighs. The long-suffering groan sounding out from Tim’s throat only eggs him on, getting progressively louder. “Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee, lousy with virginity, won’t—”

Tim clamps a hand over Kon’s mouth.

As Tim eases his grip off the clutch lever and the bike begins to the roll forward, he says, “Congrats.”

Kon keeps his grip on either side of Tim’s waist loose. “For?”

“Getting your GED, obviously.”

“I just wrote the exam? What if I failed?”

“Don’t jinx it,” Tim says.

Damian and Tim’s latest spat is, inexplicably, over a squirrel.

Not even a real squirrel. A virtual squirrel that, as displayed on Tim’s phone screen, is a maroon and beige Animal Crossing NPC.

“He’s so bitter,” Tim says across from him, obnoxiously proud. The bike keys are laid on the table by the napkin box. They're in a booth hidden away from any windows, from any potential prying eyes. “He’s been looking for Poppy for weeks now, busting his ass for Nook Mile tickets—and then she shows up in my campsite. And since I stayed over at the manor the other night, when a bunch of us were down for breakfast this morning, I said,” Tim leans forward, as if reliving the incident, reassuming the posture he took when relaying the bad news, “‘Hey, Damian, guess who got Poppy to move in.’”

It makes sense, Kon supposes, when he thinks about the current Robin’s propensity for animals, even if it’s a mind bender to reconcile the grumbly cactus of a fighter as the same eleven-year-old who gets worked up over video games.

Kon swallows another gulp of milkshake. “Don’t people have those cards they can collect and use to invite the characters they want?”

“Using an Amiibo card or trading is—” Tim makes air quotes with his fingers and pitches his voice into something nasally and not at all like how Robin sounds, “—inorganic, apparently. Okay, so I tell Damian I got Poppy, he gets mad literally right away—”

Tim mimes the expression Damian had been wearing, a blend of shock, fury, building gradually like effusive lava. You’d think someone told him Gotham disintegrated overnight. 

“—and says, ‘No. You’re lying,’ while Dick is sitting next to him, microsleeping, probably wondering, ‘Who the hell is Poppy?’”

“Aw,” he says.

Tim shakes his head, nostrils flaring. “So I watch Damian cycle through the five stages of grief about three and a half times. He looks me dead in the eye,” and then it’s back to nasal voice, “‘Todd. Spit in Drake’s breakfast.’”

Kon blinks. “Wait, why didn’t he spit in your food himself?”

“Please,” Tim scoffs, pointing at Kon with a fry, “he’s too civilised. Well, Jason wasn’t even paying attention, so Damian asks again, and Dick goes, ‘Damian, no.’ Jason doesn’t react, and I thought I lucked out—but then he starts making the loudest hacking noises, drops an entire glob of phlegm into my tea and then downs the whole thing in three seconds flat. Bruce walks in and asks who was choking, Damian says he wants a squirrel, and Bruce just… leaves again.”

The Bats are all weirdos. Kon really likes the weirdo in front of him, though, who picked him up on a Yamaha rental and has had ketchup on his chin for five minutes and counting. He gives it at least ten more until Tim notices.

“Wow, and you said I was gross.”

Tim nibbles on a fry. “So,” he says, “how was the exam?”

Kon groans.

____

Dating goes well; they’ve always been friends, above all. They have their inside jokes, shared memories, and Kon continues to bash Tim’s music preferences. But now Kon has a spare key to Tim’s place, and when they went to see Ma, Tim had been a ball of nerves despite having been to the farm before, many times. Kon had had to talk him out of bringing a bottle of wine older than him.

At present, Superboy and Red Robin are back in Metropolis, working a weapons dealing case.

Not on purpose. Maybe they were tempting fate, with Kon wearing his S-shield under his jacket and Tim being prepared for anything by default.  

This is… not Kon’s idyllic six-month anniversary celebration, but it suits them.

“Damn,” Kon says, cruising over a hundred feet in the air as his eyes follow the erratic driving of a canary yellow truck, twisting, turning, wheels scraping the curbside as it tails a black SUV, “your driving is completely off the shits.”

“I’m sure the guy with stolen pulse rifles isn’t going to yield to oncoming traffic for me,” is the almost-growl that crackles over their private line, muffled by the screech of tires. Tim sounds annoyed, especially through the deep timbre his voice automatically assumes while on duty.

Probably because they had to leave their dinner to the mercy of hundreds of park dwelling-pigeons. At least they never made any sort of reservation anywhere; small mercies. 

The black SUV makes a sharp right, and Tim snarls with irritation.

Kon trails closely behind, far up enough that the thief hasn’t noticed him yet. The idea is simple enough; pulse guns can generate a large blast radius, the tech is probably sensitive, so it’s best to corner the car somewhere more secluded before Kon swoops down and overturns the car. Tim hotwired a food truck and Kon assumes the wishy-washy driving is in case black car knows how to use the rifles and wants to try something funny.

“Heads up, they made another right turn—headed for Hamstead, probably.” He sighs, clutching his stomach. Out of all nights to commit grand larceny, it had to be this one. “Red. I’m so hungry.”

“Likely Northbound and out of city limits, then,” Tim mutters, speeding past the Daily Planet and weaving circuits past busses and cars, leaving a mass of honking vehicles in his terrifying yellow wake. “Let’s just get hotdogs later.”

“Sweet. I know all the good places.” Black SUV slows down now that Tim isn’t directly behind him. “Approaching Eldridge and—” Kon squints. “204th.”

Tim hums, thoughtful, and his stolen truck takes a shortcut that will reunite him with the SUV. “Okay. On my signal. And when you stop the car, make sure to nudge the SUV slightly to the left. Couple thousand pounds. Lowball it.”

They end up cornering the SUV in the business district—it’s emptier at this hour, with most civilians clocked out and on their commutes home. Tim is closing in—Kon can hone in on the slam of his boot on the brake pedal, then the accelerator and back on the brake on what he assumes is some convoluted driving maneuver. Finally, he shouts, “Now!”

Kon dives in a burst of superspeed, boots skating across asphalt as he lands, wind tousling his hair. Grinning, he widens his stance and rolls his shoulders, facing the black SUV dead on.

The driver panics and swerves. Kon uses that moment to smash his hands through the windshield, the glass wafer-thin against his fists. He grabs the driver and pads them with his TTK just seconds before he catches Red Robin’s call of, “Witness me,” through his earpiece.

Tim is reversing, wheels squealing against pavement—

And then he rear-ends the SUV.

“Heavens to Betsy,” Kon says, and spits out a shard. Should have kept his mouth closed. 

The combined momentum of the truck and Kon’s strength generates enough force to ram the car into the entrance of a building. Through sleek panels. Past two consecutive pairs of sliding doors, a vase, finally decelerating to a stop as it pushes against a set of elevator doors.

The black car is overturned, a mess of dented metal comically at odds with the smooth, polished marble flooring and the primly dressed receptionist standing, dumbfounded, behind the front desk.  

The thief is unharmed and squirming in Kon’s hold, but he pays them no mind as he glances up, eyes going wide in realization as he spots the huge, gaudy logo installed hundreds of feet above. “Oh shit,” Kon says, with dawning glee, “ooh, hello, L-Corp.”

Red Robin pokes his head out the window of the stupid food truck—it’s for clam chowder—and shifts gears. He steers the truck all the way to the other end of the block before reversing again, crashing into another glass panel.

Kon shields his eyes—plausible deniability—as it shatters, raining glass onto the ground, but peeks through the cracks of his fingers.

The entryway is in shambles, but it could look worse. Kon powers off his comm, one arm keeping the thief trapped while he waves the other around like a conductor and shouts, “Little to the right! Your right!”

Tim gives him a thumbs up and corrects his oversight before unlatching the door, giving Kon a little wave as he jogs over.

“We really had no other option,” Kon says as Tim kneels, unbuckling the driver’s mask to snap a few pictures before pulling out wire from his utility belt. Don’t laugh. “L-Corp just happened to be there. They’re already headed towards bankruptcy. Such a shame they keep getting the short end of the stick.”

“Exactly. Breaking and entering is wrong, but there were dangerous weapons being stolen,” Tim agrees. He pulls on the new knot fastening the driver’s wrists. Then Tim harrumphs and bring his fist out, utterly straight-faced; Kon bumps his knuckles against Tim’s. “Anyway.”

“Anyway,” Kon says.

“This is unrelated, but happy six months.”

This is it. This is romance.

Kon rescinds his earlier statement, dissolving into snickers. This is the best date of his life.

Kon has to flip the car back over so Tim can access the trunk. Ignoring Tim’s request to back off once because, “These are pulse rifles, Superboy, your telekinetic field doesn’t fare well against energy blasts,” is piss-poor reasoning from a non-meta that would fare far worse, he stands guard as Tim picks the lock and unloads the cargo.

As it turns out, their caution was a moot point; “They’re unloaded,” Kon notes, peering over to look through the casings, “the cartridges for the fuel cells are empty.”

With that covered, Tim does a few outside scans of the guns before Kon melts the barrels shut. When his hearing picks up the telltale screech of sirens, they hightail away; they’re far too hungry to be dealing with the press right now. 

Waiting for their second, hopefully uninterrupted dinner doesn’t take too long; daylight is waning and the line to the front of the hotdog cart is short. Kon sends a video of the wreckage to the groupchat and agrees to a few photos with passerby that noticed Superboy ordering food.

Valuable goods in hand, Kon floats back to the skyscraper ledge they’ve picked, overlooking one of Metropolis’ busiest streets. Legs swinging back and forth as they dangle above a thirty storey drop, Tim doesn’t react to Kon returning, too engrossed with the holographs displayed front of him, projecting from the device strapped to his wrist. There’s a rough render of the pulse rifle hovering next to a growing wall of text, all outlined in a beige glow.

Kon smiles, fond; what a keener.

“Earth to Red,” Kon says, setting four hotdogs on the ledge. “The finest rooftop dining experience of your life is about to begin.”

“CCTV shows the transport vehicle carrying the pulse rifles was intercepted on its way to a weapons testing station upstate; no one actually broke into the labs,” Tim says in the place of a greeting, still in Red Robin mode. “The guns might have been intended for Gotham; there’s been an uptick in weapons trafficking the past few weeks and this is right up their alley. Pulse rifles sell for a fortune. As for the thief—probably a hired third party to cover up their tracks.”

Collapsing the holographs back into his wrist before unbuckling his gauntlets and stuffing them back into his bag, he grabs his food.

Back to his normal voice, he says, “Anyway, thanks. Relish?”

“Yes, you weirdo, I put some on yours.” Kon takes his spot next to Tim, leaning his back against limestone and folding his legs until his kneecaps are tucked under his elbows. “Hey, buddy. Service fee. Relish tax.”

Tim’s eyebrows go up, his eyes likely rolling under his mask, but he twists to give Kon a brisk kiss. They’re up high enough that no one else can see them.

Metropolis is famous for its notoriously sunny days—but at night, the glens of steel and concrete flicker to life; Tim is drawn in equal measure by shadow and silver, outlined in a halo of pale light.

What a view, indeed.

Up this high, the wind is harsher and louder than the dins of traffic and nightlife. They have a bird’s eye view—he can see Little Bohemia and Centennial Park. He hasn’t been to the latter since his resurrection; he’s understandably hesitant about seeing where he had been forged in gold to honour his apparent death. Kon’s also noticed that Tim avoids facing the park’s general direction if he can help it.

“You know what? You’re sweet to me,” Kon says once he’s on his second hotdog, chewing on springy bread. “Ten outta ten for driving into LexCorp. Extra point for sheer pettiness.”

“Couldn’t have done it without you,” Tim says.

“Are you gonna get chewed out for that, by the way?”

“Maybe a perfunctory lecture to keep up appearances,” Tim says, popping the last piece of his food into his mouth. His thumb massages his domino where it bends over his nose.

“Right, I can imagine it,” Kon says with a lower register, “Red, how could you? Blasphemous—I cannot abide by this whatsoever. You are as cruel as he is.” He gets in Tim’s face, whose mouth is wobbling. “Twenty years Bat dungeon.’”

Tim giggles. “Dick spills sangria on him every time they’re attending the same event.”

“Y’all are terrible influences.”

Tim scrunches his nose. “The wholesome ‘aw-shucks’ act looks awful on you. Have you or have you not wrecked the Batmobile before or are you repressing the memory? It exploded.”

Kon sticks his tongue out. “Oh, I’m so sorry, but who let Bart and I take turns with the keys and recorded the whole thing?”

A beat passes. Tim crosses his arms.

“Also, Bart’s driving is consistently worse.”

“How does that absolve you.”

“Hush,” Kon says, placing a finger on Tim’s lips. “How much trouble did you get into for that one? Big lecture?”

Tim, weirdly, grins. “Oh, no. That incident is between you, me, Bart—and God. Maybe O,” he says, curling against Kon’s side. The weight of him is solid, and Kon rearranges his legs until they are pressed together, hip to knee. “Unless someone decides to review our nightlife budget reports from the past few years. Which, FYI, they won’t.”

“Batman never noticed?”

“I’m Red Robin.”

“Oh my God,” Kon says. “Speaking of wrecking things, though; I do feel bad about the clam chowder truck.”

“The Chowdermobile. No, wait. The Mollusc-mobile.”

“The Mollusc-mobile,” Kon amends, sighing fretfully. Tim drove it like a madman, and using it as a battering ram wasn’t exactly conducive to keeping it in good condition. “It fought the good fight.”

“Wayne Enterprises will reimburse the repair costs plus any lost revenue. Actually, I can triple the amount.”

It’s what the Mollusc-mobile deserves.

____

Bart’s dorm room, a remnant of seventies architecture that smells like stale laundry and the faintest suggestion of mildew, is on the top floor of a seven-storey building half a mile from the main campus. It’s a single—Bart got pretty lucky for a freshman—but only large enough that a bit of pirouette room is left after the loft bed and hidden closet.

He hadn’t needed much help setting up his tiny space, but Kon, Tim and Cassie had all shown up to help Bart move in several months back, squeezing in an extra mini fridge to prevent Bart from starving. Kon had brought Bart a few hand pies he’d baked with Ma as an orientation gift. Apple and raspberry enclosed in a tightly woven lattice.

Flight, Kon surmises, is a divine advantage to have as he hovers above the layer of dirty clothes and scrap paper the covers the wooden boards of Bart’s floor.

It’s just him and Bart today, Tim absent to target a few warehouses surrounding the Gotham marina. His hunch about the pulse rifles being intended for Gotham mobs had been correct; after nearly two weeks of tapping into intelligence satellites for footage, Tim and the other Bats connected suspect activity to unusual monetary transactions traceable back to LA. Gotham was a key intermediary point within the gunrunning route.

Then they’ll export to international clients, Tim had recounted over heavily encrypted phone call. Some weeks, calls and texts are all they manage to find the time for.

It’s been, what? Eleven, twelve days since they’ve last seen each other in person? At least Kon is headed to Gotham tomorrow night.

Bart is clearing his desk of pencils and his notebook as Kon asks, “You sure they have the ones you want in stock?”

With a hasty, “Lemmecheck—” there is a puff of dust where Bart had been standing just a moment earlier before he skids back in place. There’s an oak leaf in his hair. Kon brushes it out. “Yeah, they’re in stock. Race ya!”

“Hey wait a sec—”

Bart wins by what Kon argues, as he does every time, an incredibly slim margin on their trip to a comic bookstore downtown. His victory whoop dies a premature death when he realizes he forgot his wallet, speeding back to his dorm one more time.

Tragically, Bart’s favorite title had gotten cancelled in the time he’d spent… dead, and the discovery had been so devastating—the heartbreak, unfortunately, so great—that Bart is only just dipping his toes back into the comics scene.

“I feel like I’m committing an act of betrayal,” Bart says, stuffing a stack of books into his backpack. “But Tim said these were solid, so I guess I’ll have to trust him.”

“We all have to move on someday,” Kon says, kicking his sole against the carpet. “As a wise man once said, ‘Absence makes the heart grow fonder, or forgetful.’”

“Are you quoting the Peter Pan guy again?” Bart comments, fixing his bag back on his shoulders.

Kon sniffs, tilting his chin up. “Sorry I’m cultured.”

He and Bart then proceed to order a heapshit of food at a hole-in-the-wall that has better prices than most drive-throughs and seat themselves on a roadside curb. There’s a park across the street with a group of kids, all fifth grader sized. They’re caught up in what appears to be a heated game of grounders, scrambling all over the equipment like skittering roaches.

On the benches is the adult supervision, disinterested in the calamity playing out just a few feet away.

A kid falls off the monkey bars and gets tagged—he screams, ear-splittingly loud and indignant.

Kon twists his water bottle open, peering at the sluggish traffic and clear skies.

Neither him nor Bart ever got to experience boyhood—no getting pushed on the swings, no hair puffing out from static after building up charge going down the slides. No learning to read, no making friends in elementary school.

But that’s… okay.

It no longer feels weird to draw a total blank when reaching back for old memories. The pang of envy is an obsolete sensation. The younger him, the one that loved being Superboy and resented it and loved it all the same just wanted proof that he was real, that his thoughts were more than just implants.

Cadmus and Luthor sure as shit didn’t program their precious investment to run off, don a leather jacket and specs before becoming the superhero community’s equivalent of a bothersome teen celebrity.

And then join a superhero team with budget problems, or save the world. He’s a complete person all on his own, he thinks. Was, right from the beginning.

He wonders what Bart’s take is. Does he—Bart is choking.

“Bro, chew.”

Bart hammers a fist against his chest until he spits out a soggy wad of bread.

“Don’t remember voting you in as the boss of me,” Bart fires back. Unfazed, he moves on to another triangle of panini, teeth leading a flimsy string of bright, sharp cheddar that gets slurped up like a noodle.

Kon would pay real money to see him and Cassandra go up against one another. He’s biased towards Bart’s speedster metabolism, but Tim’s sister has a knack for putting the fear of God into just about anyone.

Kon takes a bite out of his own sandwich. “Do you know when the exhibition date is yet?”

“They’re—wow, this’s way better than the other one—finalizing the schedule by next week,” Bart says, shrugging. “I’m freshie, anyway. I probably won’t get a good display spot.”

“Whatever, we’re all coming. Don’t forget to send us the date.” Kon grins. “Bart Allen hype team, here to see what wild monstrosity he managed to bring to life. Oh, uh, this streak of red—it represents passion. Super poignant.”

Bart looks pleased.

Kon chants, clapping daintily, “Bart, Bart, Bart. Rah.”

“It’s apparently black-tie dress code, y’know,” Bart murmurs with a mouthful of cheese and tomato, “the department wants to look classy for guests or something.”

“Oh,” Kon says, grimacing. “Oh no.”

The memory of the four of them attending a Gotham high society party comes to mind. They’d gone on Tim’s invitation, spurred on by a fit of awful judgement. The highlights of the night amounted to annihilating the buffet line, the stifled giggling in between Bart, Bart, what the hell is a mignardise, and the pleasure of seeing Spooky in Brucie Wayne socialite mode.

That was four years ago. Geez.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Bart says suddenly, “but I wasn’t the one who knocked over the drinks table. That was you. It wasn’t fair we were both told off. Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions collective punishment is a war crime—”

“Not this again. It was totally you—”

“If it were me I would’ve caught. Every. Glass,” Bart fires back. “Totally you.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, dude.”

Bart sighs. “It’s literally going to be the most boring experience of my life. Might as well bring you guys so we can suffer together,” he says, swaying. A Bart-shaped metronome. “I’m gonna need to ask Tim to help me figure how to rent an actual suit or I’ll be experiencing consequences.” A sigh. “I miss Tim. Sucks that he’s busy.”

Gotham is an hour ahead of Keystone City; it should be pitch-dark in Gotham by now, the Bats mobilizing.  

Kon settles his head on Bart’s shoulder.

It’d come as a surprise when Bart announced he was trying out a visual arts degree, but Kon supposes learning anything means trudging through mind-numbing theory before getting to any of the exciting stuff. Part of him expected Bart to go for forensics or train to be a mechanic—but Wally is Wally and Barry is Barry. Bart is Bart.

Getting his GED didn’t make Kon want to study journalism any more than he had before, anyway.

____

On the way to Tim’s apartment, Kon intercepts what could have been a four-car pileup on the freeway, plus a gunfight.

It’s eleven in Gotham by the time Kon fishes out his copy of the key fob, dragging himself up the stairs and through the hallway. Entering the premises like a respectful person. Woo-hoo.

Tim is, unsurprisingly, hunched over his laptop when Kon swings the door open and toes off his shoes. He’s in sweats, at least, and his hair looks damp from being washed, but his sclerae are notably pink. The lenses of Tim’s glasses reflect the blue-white glow of the screen as he continues to type, calling out with an absentminded, “Hi, Kon.”

“Missed you,” Kon says, hovering over to see what he’s doing. It’s a report. “Wow. That’s… a lot of typos.”

“Me too.” Tim backspaces aggressively and rewrites an entire sentence.

“How… are you doing?”

“Peachy keen,” Tim says, very firmly, twisting his torso and craning his head up until he’s looking up at where Kon is floating. More mildly, wearing a ghost of a smile, he adds, “You can go take a shower. I’ll be quick.”

Kon pecks Tim’s forehead and leaves him be.

Kon cleans up and briefly rummages through the closet before finding an old sweatshirt he likes, plus a fresh pair of boxers.

Tim’s not hard to relocate; he hasn’t moved, pecking away, twenty minutes later.

“You almost done?” Kon asks, eyeing the tautness in Tim’s muscles. “You look like you could use a breather.”

Tim’s worked later hours, sure, but normally he’s less… rickety than he is at the moment. It’ll be less tedious a task if Tim can actually concentrate; he’s got Bad Day spray-painted on his back like a neon sign.

“I’m running some gels and they should be done in another ten minutes or so,” Tim says, “and I’ve got two more pages of this report left.”

Kon narrows his eyes at the document as Tim hammers out another incoherent sentence, trying to figure out what Tim wrote. “When do you need it in?”

“Monday.” Tim backspaces again, practically slamming the delete key.   

“It’s Friday night.”

“Sure is.”

“So maybe you should rest first,” he presses, reaching out. “You look tired.”

“Better to do it now,” Tim insists. “Just two pages.”

“Seriously—”

“Alright, I get it,” Tim snaps, fists clenching where the dangle above the keyboard. Kon’s hand freezes halfway on its way to clasp his shoulder. 

He sounds pissed, and the hurt winding around Kon’s ribs is instant and heavy.

Kon frowns, retracting his hands to stuff them into his hoodie’s front pocket. “If you get it,” he mutters, “act like it.”

That makes it worse, because Tim pinches the bridge of his nose, scowling. “Yes, I do know. I’m not being an idiot. I can handle two more pages,” he says, on the defensive.

“Fine,” Kon says, too sour, inadvertently casting bait.

It catches, tangles and thrashes. Tim grumbles, “I know it’s not your usual way of doing things but can you please just be patient?”

Kon grits his teeth. “Tim,” he says, the chill seeping into his tone prompting Tim to pause.

Lips thinning, Tim fidgets in his seat as if pinned. Halted, with wide eyes, he says, “I—”

“That wasn’t fair.”

That spurs Tim into action. “No—I didn’t mean—” he says hurriedly, shaking his head, chair screeching against tile as he stands. “Kon.”

“Seemed like you did,” Kon continues. “Look. Your eyes are bloodshot. You clearly haven’t slept. I was trying to encourage you to do something sensible, like, oh, I don’t know, take a break. That doesn’t mean I think you can’t handle yourself, or whatever the hell was going through your head, alright?”

“I—” They don’t touch. Kon’s hands remain hidden; Tim’s arms twitch—force of habit, at this point—before he settles them back to his sides at the obvious lack of invitation. “I’m sorry.”

Kon closes his eyes and lets out a breath. Briefly, he entertains the thought that he’s being oversensitive—but. No. Fuck that noise.

“I wasn’t being fair,” Tim parrots. “You’re not a bother; you’re never a bother. Please believe me.”

“I do,” Kon says, and Tim reacts by reaching out to close his laptop. “No, finish up what you were doing.”

A wounded expression flashes across Tim’s face, and he full-on wilts. Kon’s chest twinges, the natural urge to take whatever is making his boyfriend look like that—and grind it to smithereens—wars with his stubbornness, the lingering frustration. “No, I can. I can do it later.”

“It’ll bother you all night if you don’t wrap things up properly,” Kon explains quietly. He gestures to the bedroom door with a twist of his neck. “I’ll be in there, okay?”

Tim exhales. “Okay.”

Kon alternates between staring at his phone and the ceiling, but even then he can make out the near-frantic pace of Tim moving around the apartment. His hearing picks up Tim’s signature, lighting-fast touch typing. Footsteps, the shutter of a Nikon camera.

He sits up when Tim arrives to linger at the entrance of the bedroom, one hand gripping the doorframe and body partially obscured by the wall, half-hiding. 

They haven’t seen each other in almost two weeks. He strains from the need to get up and pull Tim in and hoard the way Tim looks at him like he’s something special, the smell of shampoo and Kevlar—

“Conner?” Tim asks, cautious.

“That would be me,” Kon says.

“Can I come in?”

“It’s your room.”

Tim walks over until he’s standing next to the bed, wringing his hands and staring at the comforter. Kon scooches until he’s at the mattress’ edge, legs bracketing the spot where Tim stands.

“I shouldn’t have reacted like that,” Tim blurts out, rubbing his arms to soothe himself, “I shouldn’t have taken my stress out on you. You were just looking out for me—and I. I was being rude, and I’m really sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Kon says.

“Thank you,” Tim replies, sincere. “Um.”

“You know I’m not mad at you, right?” When he doesn’t get a response, he goes on, “You do know you don’t have to prove you’re capable to me, don’t you?”

Tim’s fingers tighten where they grip his biceps, nodding hurriedly.

“We’re okay, Tim. Just—c’mere, okay—oof.”

Tim flings his full weight onto him, Kon reacting just fast enough to catch Tim and pull him in without losing balance and toppling onto the sheets.

Reflexively, Kon’s face breaks out into a smile. God. He missed this guy.

Face buried in Kon’s neck, squeezing hard, Tim says, “I always talk myself out of telling you—I don’t know why I do, I’m just a chicken when it comes to saying things out loud, but—you’re brilliant, you’re funny and you have a scary good memory—”

“I’m pretty sure the last bit is just because I was conceived in a test tube, but I appreciate it anyway.”

“Clone thing or not, it’s you,” Tim says. Kon grabs one of Tim’s hands, smoothing a thumb over his knuckles. The skin there is dry and discoloured from repeat heal-overs.

“Yeah, guess I’m no slouch in the brains department, huh?” Kon jokes. “Watch out, Tim.”

That earns him a careful smile; “Oh, yeah? Name one fact.”

“Easy,” Kon concedes, hands moving to run up and down Tim’s ribs and torso, kneading the residual tension away. He bumps their noses together, then moves on to Tim’s neck. “Hmm.”

Tim’s eyes narrow. “Conner, c’mon.”

“Hmmm.” His head is angled so that his breath fans against a pulse point.

Tim grunts, tilting his head to kiss him, tender and desperate. Kon feels something uncoil when their mouths seal together and they melt, in tandem, onto the mattress.

Hair smushed against pillows, Kon’s groaning is drowned out by the roar of his own blood and the rustle of bedsheets.

It’s soft, uncoordinated; there is little urgency as they move. Tim is sluggish, calf slung over Kon’s hip and lacking the precision and purpose he usually emulates. Lagging from the exhaustion that must finally be creeping up on him.

Heavy-lidded, Tim cups Kon’s jaw in his palms, so plainly affectionate that Kon has to take a moment to drink it all in: the waning blemish along Tim’s right cheek, ashy purple bordered by yellow, spilling over beige. His lovely, barely-there smile, sunbright.

This is something he never expected to have—the privilege of unabashed staring, to look without the cloying, gut-reaction shame for wanting.

Were you made to feel like this too, Kon ponders, pressing his lips against the space between Tim’s brows, did you watch TV that made you the butt of the joke and did you ever have classmates that spat out the word gay like it meant something vile? Did your mother and father? Did they break your heart in more ways than you realized?

Especially now, there is the aching contentment in how incredibly right it is to be with Tim.

Responding in kind, Tim offers a row of kisses along the side of Kon’s neck. He flicks the hoop through his earlobe. “This is nice,” he says, subdued but genuine.

In a trance, Kon runs his pointer and middle finger along the side of Tim’s firm waist, to the hem of his waistband. Taps his hipbone, once, twice. “S’my line,” he mumbles. “Pants?”

Tim blinks, mouth half-open. “Um—oh,” he says, reddening. “Right now?”

Kon tilts his head. “Right now, what?” he asks, realizing the implication right as the words are out of his mouth. He chortles, snapping the elastic. “Pssh, get your mind out of the gutter; I just figured you’d be more comfortable without them on. And, uh, full offense, you look blitzed on sleep deprivation. I’m kinda surprised you haven’t passed out yet, to be honest.”

Tim scrubs his face with the underside of his wrist. “I’ve been up for longer,” he says, but shuffles back to sit up and shimmy out of his joggers, throwing them over the side of bed. “I’m not even tasting colors yet.”

Clad in boxers and a t-shirt, he lies back down.

“You are horrifying,” Kon says.

“I try.”

They should sleep soon anyway, Kon figures. They’ve got time. They have tomorrow. Tim looks so goddamn tired.

Reading his mind, Tim says, “I guess we should—”

And then a full-body jolt Kon senses more than sees cuts Tim off, his muscles abruptly tensing as he draws in a sharp breath.

Alarmed and wide awake, Kon pushes himself upright; Tim looks… fine, if a bit flustered. His hands go to grip Tim’s shoulders, pulling him upright. “What—are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” he says, averting his eyes. “That was just—it happens.”

Untrue; there hasn’t been anything like this. Kon isn’t mollified. And Tim knows it; he sighs, deep and… humiliated. His head is bowed, that nervous taptaptap from his fingers returning, this time to his thighs.

“It’s not dangerous,” Tim restarts, blinking quickly. He wriggles out of Kon’s grasp. “As I was saying, we should… just go to sleep. I’m going to go brush my teeth.”

Tim said not dangerous, Tim is more embarrassed than concerned, so—oh. Kon knows what this is.

Grabbing Tim’s wrist to keep him from retreating entirely, Kon tugs firmly enough to stop him, too gentle to shift Tim’s weight.

“Brain zaps,” he says, venturing a guess. “That’s what those were, right?”

Tim stares at him, frozen, hand slack. That is confirmation enough.

“I asked Dinah about—about antidepressants,” Kon admits.

He was curious for himself, to some extent, because apparently his teenage proclivity for rotting in bed for weeks was quote-unquote an unhealthy coping mechanism, but he had also wanted to understand his friend. Tim hated—hates—talking about it.

Dinah had given him a basic rundown about what to expect when taking SSRIs. The therapeutic effects, the side effects, common withdrawal symptoms.

Withdrawal as in concentration problems, nausea, irritability, brain zaps; what feels like an electric shock radiating from the head, flooding to the rest of the body, an abrupt surge of vertigo—

Tim is still staring dead at him, with shiny bug-eyes. His expression, carefully set to neutral, falters—slips. Biting down on his lip, and Tim focuses instead on their linked hands.

“You missed a dose?” Kon asks, threading their fingers properly.

“Yeah.”

“As long as you take your next one at the right time you should be alright, right?”

“Yeah,” Tim croaks, nodding. “I’ll—I’ll be fine. I’m not trying to go cold turkey. The op just ran longer than we expected. And then there was an emergency in Coventry. I ended up crashing for about an hour at one of Jason’s safehouses. Then I needed to go straight to work, and my medication is here, so.” Even his shrugging carried a pitch of desperation. “You asked Dinah?”

“Yeah, I hope that’s okay. I didn’t name any names. She went, like, ‘I’m a therapist, not a psychiatrist, so I don’t have the authority to prescribe you anything, but I can give you a referral if you want,’ so I doubt she suspects I was asking about someone else. Plus, there’s the client confidentiality agreement so her lips are zipped—oh. Oh, shit.”

Oh no.

“You’re crying.”

“I’m not,” Tim hiccups more than says, swiping at his eyes. It comes out like a whine, the syllables unstable against his tongue. Another fat tear runs down his cheek and he hastily swipes at his face, free hand maintaining a white-knuckled grip on the duvet, bunching the folds onto his lap.

Kon buries his fingers into Tim’s hair, tracking the subtle wobble of his lips, the gloss over blue irises.

When Tim was Robin, the colours of his suit had always been at odds with his demeanor. A closed-off and serious boy under opaque lenses and a traffic-light costume, doing his damndest to be needed. For him, existing was a transient, quiet affair; blend in, fill a role.

Kon can count the number of times he’s seen Tim cry on one hand. It’s silent, just beads of water running down his face—no gnashed teeth, no volume. Always tongue-tied sadness mulishly held captive. 

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” he pleads, the pad of his thumb damp as he smooths it across Tim’s cheekbone, over and over. “Sunshine?”

And now it froths up to the surface, hot oil over water. A sob. Then another.

Tim clamps a shaky hand over his mouth to muffle the mangled, ugly noises. Surprise is naked on his face as a fresh wave of tears spills over in a feeble stream, seeping through cuticle and parched skin.

“Hey.”

To his credit Tim does try to answer, but his decision to glance upwards, gaze flickering to where Kon’s hands hover over his shoulders, unsure, is a mistake. His breathing gets more labored, chest heaving, limbs fraying at the edges. He must want—

Tim gasps with relief when Kon pulls him in completely, forehead pressing against Kon’s collarbones. He weeps, gutted and near inaudible, fists finding purchase on the fabric of Kon’s sweatshirt.

Arms occupied, Kon uses his TTK to drag the blanket over Tim’s shoulders, and then his own, until they’re both wrapped up in a cocoon. Nuzzles Tim’s hair as he shakes. “S’okay,” he mumbles, “everything’s gonna be okay.”

Tim had done this for him once, when Kon had woken up in the middle of the night panting, furiously blinking away the enduring image of a crushed skull spitting hot blood, Knockout’s jeer of you only do what I tell you. Make me proud of the way you die. Looming over him, mocking, I don’t think I’ll ever find a better lapdog, and the repulsive, phantom spasm of his lungs—how utterly gullible he had been—

Kon gulps, screwing his eyes shut.

Tim—Tim had made him something warm. Tea. It was peppermint tea. Sat with him.

Kon had been hugging his knees, nursing the mug like a fragile bird when Tim bundled him up in their blanket. He remembers how it made him real.

Neither of them had gone back to sleep. Tim had opened up his hand, Kon peering at it for a long moment before hooking their pinkies. They shared a tin of cookies, buttery crumbs glued to their molars. Playing cards until morning poured through the windows, ochre against the blinds, pale yellow in the thin streaks curved around Tim’s body.

He can only hope to provide the same comfort.

Under the duvet, he rubs patterns against the small of Tim’s back, in silly repetition. The pace of his fingers is slow, steady, halting only once over a divot of waxy skin; the memory of a bullet drilling into tissue. Kon must have touched that spot a hundred times by now.

When he notices that Tim has gathered himself enough to regulate his own pulse, taking very deliberate, measured breaths to come down efficiently, Kon has to smile. Bat-training really covers everything. 

At some point Tim flinches again—another zap—and Kon adjusts so he can place a kiss by the shell of his ear.

And soon, there is—

Gravel-voiced, “Whoever—fucking said crying is cathartic. Can get bent.”

“Hello to you too, sunshine.” Tim shudders at the nickname, but it coaxes a tremulous smile out of him. Painted with tear tracks, his expression is questioning. “What? It suits you.”

A huff. “In what universe?”

“This one, at the very least.”

“Don’t be a smartass.” Tim takes a few deep breaths so his words become steadier, clearing his throat. “You go out of your way to come see me and I. I get upset with you over the tiniest thing, and then I get snot on your clothes. Yeah. Real sunshine guy right here.”

Kon takes his sleeve to wipe at Tim’s face, Tim making small sounds of protest. “No one makes me come here except me, and doing the laundry is a thing.” Curiosity getting the better of him, he adds, mindful enough to sound impartial, “How come you didn’t tell me you forgot to take your medication today?”

Did you think I would shun you for it? he wonders. You’ve been with me through my worst. I’ve hurt you. You’re still here. Why wouldn’t I extend the same courtesy?

“I didn’t want to make excuses for being a dick.” He shrugs.

“Yeah, you shouldn’t have talked to me like that,” Kon agrees, making a twirling motion with his finger, “but let’s circle back to the fact that the whole thing that got the both of us upset in the first place was that I was worried if you were okay.”

“Oh,” Tim says, looking at Kon like he’s unearthed some ancient secret. “Thank you. You’ve got no, no idea how much I—thank you.”

I love you, Kon thinks, to this splotchy-faced, dry-humored boy.

Who puts a Herculean effort into making himself better, who does everything out of love; love for his city, love for his family. Love with absolute intent. And then, Wow, I love you.

What he says is, “You’re kinda ridiculous, huh?”

“So I’ve been told.”

Kon slips out of the hoodie and drops it into the hamper while Tim soothes his swollen eyes with icy water.

The en suite is cramped—the shower stall and sink take up three-quarters of the space available, hardly leaving any wiggle room for two people, let alone one. They bump into each other repeatedly—shoulders, hips—as they both brush their teeth. Tim is jostling him on purpose just to be troublesome, so Kon returns the favor by making faces in the mirror over Tim’s shoulder, teeth covered in toothpaste froth. When Kon gurgles his water loudly and deliberately, Tim laughs a breathy laugh, and it’s wonderful to hear.

It’s approaching one-thirty in the morning when they climb back into bed. Not incredibly late by either of their standards. The only lighting left in the room is from the table lamp glowing on the nightstand.

“Never thought I would have this,” Tim confesses, when they’re both lying on their sides, face-to-face.

It’s an open-ended statement. They let it linger, let it swim and settle between them, like sediment in the ocean. Have what? Be with another man? Be happy with someone? Make it to adulthood?

“I’m almost nineteen.”

“Neat,” Kon says. “We’re both baby adults now, huh? We can throw you a party.”

Tim hums noncommittally. “And then I could—I could be twenty.”

“And twenty-one.” Their lips meet. Just contact at first, barely a kiss. Then Tim presses forward with a roughness that would’ve bruised if Kon were anyone else. Kon sighs, tasting minty mouthwash. His lips buzz when Tim pulls away.

“Twenty-two,” Tim says, like an epiphany, like the idea is astonishing; as if this is the first time it’s occurred to him. And maybe—maybe it is. Fuck. “I could be twenty-two. Twenty-three.”

“Yes,” Kon agrees, hushed. And twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six and thirty-nine and sixty, if Kon had any authority over it. “You will be. And—well, I’ll be there, as long as you want.”

“Yeah?”

“Totally. This is pretty personal, but I kind of have a crush on you.”

“No kidding?” Tim says. A hand comes to stroke the side of Kon’s neck, thumb over flesh. Determined, he adds, “Okay. You’ll be there if you’re so sure. And I’ll—I’m going to make you happy.”

Not I want to. I’m going to; a tangible goal that is as much of a promise to himself and as it is to Kon. Tim is extraordinarily bullheaded once an objective is in sight—he will punch and claw to reach them. He does not waver on promises.

Happy, Tim said.

There is a flareup of his ribcage, bright with candlewick flames. The heat radiating through him is a hearth, a home.

“As usual,” he manages, swallowing hard, “you are way ahead of the curve.”