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“Oh, you’re—oh. Oh. Huh.”
Kon’s not sure how to feel about the way Tim is staring at him. He’s broken just about every rule in the book this afternoon, but—what is Clark going to say, honestly? Kon understands why Clark has always been so firm about keeping their abilities under wraps, the possible ramifications of getting sloppy, letting someone catch them unawares in a moment of weakness, laziness, impatience, but—
Tim was going to die. Clark will understand that, surely. No possibility of government surveillance was going to keep Kon from saving him.
If somebody shows up a week from now to haul him away and dissect him for science, it will have been worth it to see Tim walk away from the car crash they just narrowly escaped. Tim is a good driver, but even with Kon’s enhanced senses, the other car had seemed to come out of nowhere, cutting across two lanes of traffic at what Kon guesses must have been nearly eighty miles an hour just as Tim was accelerating to get around a particularly slow truck. There had been no time for Tim to swerve out of the way, nowhere for him to go anyway with an eighteen-wheeler on their other side, and Kon had reacted on pure instinct, throwing his TTK out to shield Tim from the initial impact and then bending crushed metal with his bare hands to free Tim and haul him out of the car, away from the danger of another impact or an explosion, one ear out for the rapid-but-strong heartbeat of the driver of the other car and the panicked cursing of the truck driver as he dials 911.
Still, though, right or not, it leaves him here in this moment with Tim still cradled in his arms, staring up at Kon with a mixture of fascination and amazement that Kon… doesn’t hate, if he’s being honest. Doesn’t hate the look on Tim’s face, or the faint weight of him in Kon’s arms, or the warmth of his side pressed against Kon’s ribs, mirroring the growing warmth in Kon’s cheeks.
They’re still literally up a tree, which Kon thinks he should probably do something about before the driver of the other car wakes up, or the police show up, but he’s having trouble focusing on that when Tim is reaching out, one hesitant hand, his fingers brushing lightly against Kon’s jaw like he’s not sure anymore that Kon is entirely real. There’s blood trickling down Tim’s temple, but Kon is pretty sure the cut is superficial—head wounds bleed a lot, right?
“I always knew you were special, but you really don’t do anything halfway, do you?” Tim asks, and Kon feels him start to tremble as he lets out a breathy little laugh. “You’re—what are you, Kon? Really?”
The shaking is getting worse, and Kon frowns, holds Tim a little tighter. He can hear sirens coming, still distant—it’ll be a minute or two before Tim’s ears pick them up, but Kon throws his TTK back over Tim and drops them to the ground as quickly as he can anyway. Hoping his superspeed is enough to blur them out of the range of human vision, he gets them back to the car and drops into a crouch in the narrow wedge of space between passenger’s side door and the wheel of the truck. “Play along for a minute, okay? I’ll explain everything later, I promise. Pretend to be unconscious.”
The look Tim gives him is unimpressed enough that it actually starts to make Kon feel a little better about the whole situation, but he does close his eyes—Kon can see his eyebrows twitch at the sound of metal grinding when Kon reaches out with his TTK to crumple the driver’s side door a little more, bend it out of the shape of Tim's body. The goal is to make the impact seem convincing while leaving room for plausible deniability that he would have been able to drag Tim from the wreckage, but Kon hasn’t been in enough car crashes to know if he’s succeeded; he’s working on a guess and a prayer.
Hoping he’s done enough, he puts the second part of his hastily-crafted plan into action—the sound of the police sirens are now within the range of normal human hearing, and Kon pushes himself to a half-crouch, makes a show of dragging Tim, blessedly limp in Kon’s arms as he plays along, out from between the cars and off to the side of the highway.
“Don’t think you’re getting out of this easily,” Tim mutters, low enough that only Kon’s ears would catch it, his lips barely moving as first responders begin swarming the scene of the accident. Kon hoists Tim up a little further against his chest, Tim’s head lolling back onto his shoulder as Tim groans softly, his eyelashes fluttering. A medic spots them and heads in their direction, and Kon sighs, not sorry for the way it makes Tim shiver in his arms as the breath gusts past his ear, Kon’s voice soft and just for Tim.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
*
Tim had been dead serious about not letting Kon off the hook—he calls for a ride as soon as they’re cleared by the medics and have given their statements and contact information to the police, and a Wayne Enterprises car drops them off outside Tim’s apartment less than half an hour later.
Kon doesn’t need enhanced vision to see that Tim’s hands are still shaking as he clambers out, but he grabs Kon’s wrist with a look of determination on his face and drags Kon out of the car with him, up three flights of stairs to his corner apartment. It’s as he’s getting his keys out of his pocket that the last few hours finally seem to catch up to him—he fumbles the keys so badly he nearly drops them, and the trembling of his hands seems to get progressively worse with each attempt to jam his key into the lock.
“Here,” Kon says, finally stepping in and easing the keys out of Tim’s grasp. Tim stares at Kon’s hand on his wrist for a long second, and Kon wonders what he’s seeing—the contrast between his slender wrist and Kon’s broad palm? The hand that pried him out of the steely clutches of death this afternoon? The strength to crush bone into dust?
Lifting his hand slowly, Kon steps back, and Tim’s eyes snap up to meet his—there’s fear there, as Kon hears Tim’s heart picking up, but it’s not the fear Kon was expecting. Softer, tinged with worry and apology, and Kon breathes a soft laugh as he opens the door to Tim’s apartment, gestures him inside.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Tim blurts as soon as the door shuts behind them. He’s got that determined look on his face, the one Kon recognizes from years of friendship—it’s the same as it was during their freshman year of college, new friends cramming together the night before midterms started, and it’s the same one he sees now when Tim talks about new initiatives he’s planning for the Wayne Foundation, proposals he fully intends to ram through with or without cooperation. He rarely turns it on Kon, but taking the full brunt of it now, Kon is decidedly glad that they are friends. He would hate to be on the wrong end of a look like that.
“Okay,” Kon says, rounding Tim’s kitchen island to retrieve glasses from the cabinet over the sink. Filling them with water one at a time, he lets Tim think, forces one glass into Tim’s hand before retreating to lean against the island, watching as Tim begins to pace.
Truthfully, Kon is just as nervous as Tim. The biggest secret of his life is out now, to a person he cares about more than—well, more than a lot of things. Tim is his best friend, and they’ve been dancing around the line of something… more for months now, something different. Kon is about to find out if that possibility has just withered on the vine in one spectacular display of thoughtless panic, and every moment Tim spends wandering back and forth, chewing on his lip with furrowed eyebrows, is a moment that Kon spends trapped in the agony of suspense, trying his best to be patient as he waits to see if Tim is going to hit him with a deluge of questions or shut him out completely.
“So, have you always—what exactly—how long—”
Tim halts abruptly, turns on his heel to face Kon, and his expression is just… helpless. Kon can’t help smiling, though cracking the stoic façade enough to allow any emotion to slip through makes his chest ache with anxiety, the possibility that he’ll fall apart entirely.
“I’m the, uh.” Kon stops, clears his throat, and puts his glass of water down before he shatters it. Taking a deep breath, he pushes through the sentence as steadily as he can. “The half-clone of an alien.”
Tim’s jaw drops, and he stares blankly at Kon for a long beat before he lets out an explosive breath, sits right down in the middle of his kitchen floor.
“God, that is so much weirder than I was expecting,” he mutters, rubbing one hand over his face before propping himself up with an elbow on his bent knee, running a hand through his hair and yanking distractedly. “Pick a struggle, please.”
Kon really wants to laugh at that, he does, but he’s a little bit afraid that if he moves, he’s going to burst into tears, or hysterics, or out of his fucking skin. The silence hangs between them until Tim glances up—Kon’s not really sure what his face is doing anymore, panic beginning to paint the world a little blurry around the edges, but Tim’s look of indignant bewilderment melts into something softer, and he pushes himself to his knees, reaches out to grab Kon’s hands and tug him gently to the floor. It takes a second for Kon to cooperate, Tim’s warm hands registering without connecting to the part of his brain that reminds him he’s supposed to move when somebody touches him. Once it does, he has to try at the last second not to dent Tim’s kitchen floor as he collapses.
“Conner,” Tim says, and his voice is gentle, his hands soft as he cradles Kon’s face, tugs Kon’s chin up until Kon meets his eyes. “You know I don’t—I don’t care. It would have been nice to know, if you had told me yourself instead of… waiting until I was on the brink of death, but… you’re my best friend, Kon. Nothing you could tell me would ever change that. You know that, right?”
“I was scared,” Kon says before he realizes it, realizes how true it is. “It’s not—there’s no one else like me on the planet, Tim. There never has been. I’m not supposed to be here, I was never supposed to exist, and I’ve spent my whole life hiding, trying to be normal. I didn’t wanna hide it from you, but I was scared that you wouldn’t—that I’m—”
Taking a deep breath, he reaches up, just far enough to rest his fingertips on Tim’s wrist. “A lot of people would think I’m a… a freak. Abomination. Whatever you wanna—”
There’s a hand over his mouth suddenly, and Tim is meeting his eyes with that furious determination again.
“I don’t wanna call you anything of the sort, Conner, and I’m not going to sit here and listen while you do it, either. I don’t care where you came from or how you were born—nobody gets to talk about you like that.”
An uncertain smile finally twists Kon’s lips, and it’s muffled when he murmurs into Tim’s palm, a soft, “sorry.”
“Forgiven,” Tim says, but he’s eyeing Kon like he’s waiting for more bullshit. Kon might be a little dumb sometimes, but he’s not stupid—he keeps his mouth shut, and the silence that stretches between them as they watch each other is… comfortable. Warm.
Maybe that’s what goes to Kon’s head, or the euphoria of Tim knowing his secret, or the near-death experience. Maybe a little bit of all three. Maybe just the way Tim is looking at him. Kon’s not sure, but there’s something sweet and slow simmering in his chest when he opens his mouth, filling his head with the spring-soft thought of possibility.
“Will you kiss me?”
Tim blinks once, twice, and Kon is pretty sure he feels eternity stretching in that half-second, nothing at all to do with his superhuman senses. His heart doesn’t even have time to finish tripping in his chest before Tim is smiling, though, his eyes crinkling at the corners, Kon’s favorite expression in the whole world. The hands on his cheeks are steady and sure as Tim leans in.
It’s a good first kiss, Kon thinks distantly. Slow and easy, and one of Tim’s hands slips around the back of Kon’s head, fingers carding through Kon’s hair as Tim cradles him close, kisses him sweetly and thoroughly. Kon can’t help chasing Tim when he pulls back, and Tim’s fond chuckle as he captures Kon’s lips again makes Kon’s whole body feel light.
When they finally break apart, Tim finds Kon’s hand, brings it to his lips and kisses Kon’s knuckles, and Kon has to check that he’s not actually floating.
“Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” Kon says as Tim scoots closer, settles himself boldly in Kon’s lap, because his brain hasn’t really turned back on yet and he’s not sure what else to say. Tim’s shoulders shake as he tucks his face into Kon’s shoulder, but when he pulls back to look up at Kon again, he’s grinning.
“I can think of a few ways you could make it up to me. I have so many questions.”
Kon laughs.