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“say my name and everything just stops
i don’t want you like a best friend
only bought this dress so you could take it off
take it off (ha, ha, ha)”
– taylor swift, ‘dress’
The first time it happens, it’s entirely Tim’s own fault; he can admit that much.
He’s in the middle of practising his fighting stances with two old escrima sticks he’s borrowed from Dick when Kon walks into his room without knocking first. It’s funny how much that would have bothered him only a few years ago, when all Tim had known were empty mansions with more rooms than he could ever hope to fill, and privacy hadn’t been a luxury so much as something he couldn’t have escaped if he’d tried.
“Hey, man,” Kon says, and Tim decides that he likes how much spending most of his weekends at Titans Tower has changed his perception of what is and isn’t important in life; how it made him realise that the nonchalance with which his best friend barges in on him these days isn’t a sign of his lack of respect, but proof of how comfortable they have grown around each other.
Then again, Kon’s always been the exception to every one of Tim’s rules, so Tim isn’t sure if there ever was a time that he would have minded the other boy treating his room like his own. Perhaps it isn’t a Titans thing, he thinks, but just another Kon thing– he’s starting to realise that he’s accumulated lots of those over the years. Maybe he should make a list some day.
“Hey,” Tim replies without turning around.
“Can I borrow a shirt?” Kon asks without preamble, “I don’t have anything here without an ‘S’ on it. Bart is making us go to Dave and Buster’s. Play some games. Have some fun.”
Tim almost snorts at that, but he doesn’t think twice before he walks over to his closet to grab out a shirt for Kon to wear. He stops, for a moment, to look down at his bruised knuckles as he buries his fingers in the soft cotton of the first shirt he can find. His voice sounds quiet, a little broken even to himself, when he whispers, “Sometimes I think we forgot how to do that.”
From the corner of his eye, he can see Kon scratch the back of head. If it were anyone else, Tim might have taken back his words, laughed it off, but he doesn’t have to pretend with Kon; can’t really. He hates it sometimes, but it’s also his favourite thing about him, about them.
And it’s not like he’s wrong. The Titans still have fun, sure, Tim still has fun– only these days the balance of what constitutes a fun night out for them is slightly tipped in favour of beating up bad guys and defeating the occasional armada of evil aliens, which hadn’t left a lot of time for bonding over burgers and videogames.
Not that Tim minds all that much, not since his dad was murdered. Losing one father figure and realising that he’s starting to turn into the other, into the very thing he tried to stop Batman from becoming when he took up the mantle of Robin, hasn’t exactly left him in the mood for bowling alleys and ice cream and whatever else it is that normal teenagers do for fun.
“If what we just saw taught us anything, Tim– it’s that we need to lighten up,” Kon mutters, shuddering at the memory of the calamitous glimpse into their futures that none of them had asked for and that everyone wishes they could unsee, “And we need to stick together. No matter what.”
“No matter what, Conner,” Tim agrees without hesitation and wraps his fingers around Kon’s outstretched hand, squeezing hard as he swallows around the lump that forms in his throat at the sentiment, and at the touch.
Tim still feels raw, every day, every hour; and sometimes he wonders if the best he can hope for is for the pain to fade away into numbness before the black hole in his heart eats him alive. But then there’s moments like this one, where Kon smiles at him and never comments on how, of late, Tim lets their touches linger a little longer than he needs to; and there’s all those nights, too, that they spend lying on the rooftop of Titans Tower, with Tim’s head pillowed on Kon’s chest, counting stars that neither of them ever get to see at home.
“Here,” Tim gives Kon a small smile and hands over the dark red shirt he’s blindly pulled out from the middle of the pile, “It might be a bit small on you, but it’ll do.”
“Thanks,” Kon nods before he grabs the hem of his own shirt and pulls it over his head in one, swift movement, revealing toned muscles and an expanse of unmarred skin that complements Tim’s collection of scars in the most unflattering way.
Tim feels an unexpected blush creep up his neck as his eyes follow the ripple of Kon’s abs when he crumples up his shirt into a ball and throws it in the direction of the laundry hamper in the corner of the room. His instincts have Tim avert his eyes before his brain can compute what’s happening, but he still catches the proud smirk on his best friend’s face when the shirt lands right in the hamper; and, somehow, that only makes his cheeks burn brighter.
That’s also when he notices that his heart is hammering in his chest and his thoughts are running at a million miles per hour, tumbling over each other until none of them make sense anymore; but Tim’s always been a little too good at taking a step back, at creating a disconnect between his body and his brain, to the point where it feels like he’s on the outside looking in; only he doesn’t like the image that’s forming in his mind right now, fuzzy edges sharpening until there’s no denying what’s right in front of him.
He sees a flash of red in his periphery, and then Kon’s hand is on his cheek, tilting up his head and making blue eyes meet bluer ones, “Hey, Tim– Tim, look at me. You okay?”
Kon sounds confused and also a little concerned, but Tim doesn’t trust himself to speak yet, doesn’t trust his mouth not to blurt out what his brain is scrambling to put into words the second he opens it, so he just nods instead. Kon’s cool fingers feel like they’re burning into the overheated skin of Tim’s cheek before he pulls away and Tim breathes a sigh of relief.
“Your heart’s beating really fast, man. You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” Tim chokes out, “Just feeling a little dizzy all of a sudden. I’m– I’m fine now.”
Kon eyes him suspiciously, and because he’s Tim Drake and Murphy’s law might as well be named after him instead of Edward Murphy at this point, the other boy chooses that exact moment to cross his arms, drawing attention to the obscene stretch of the dark red fabric around his biceps and the way it clings to his chest like it was painted on.
That’s when the final puzzle piece slots into place and Tim realises the gravity of the mistake he’s made in lending Kon one of his shirts. It’s all starting to unfold in his mind, slowly, at first, but rapidly picking up speed, like a boulder rolling down a hill; the extent of the error in his calculations, his unwitting omittance of a singular but far from inconsequential variable in the equation that is his friendship with Kon.
Oh no.
Oh no, oh no, oh no.
Tim’s brain stutters to a halt. He’s vaguely aware of Kon’s mouth moving, but he can’t make out any of the words because the sound of the blood rushing in his ears is drowning out everything except the panicked beating of his own heart.
Right now, there’s plenty of things that should alert Tim to the fact that he’s royally screwed, but what really drives the point home is that he’s used to Kon wearing impossibly tight shirts. He’s pretty sure he’s made jokes about it before, and he’s never once felt like his brain was about to explode with how much he wants to dip his fingers underneath their hem– which is how he knows, for a fact, that the reason that this is different is because it’s Tim’s shirt.
It’s different, because it makes Tim feel like Kon belongs to him and he belongs to Kon– not just because of their allegiance as Robin and Superboy, but because, of all the people Conner Kent could have chosen to place his trust in, he chose Timothy Jackson Drake, in and out of costume. It’s different, because it makes him imagine late night phone calls from Gotham to Metropolis, and lazy Sunday mornings spent in bed in San Francisco. It’s different, because it makes him want to steal the shirt after Kon’s done wearing it, so he can take it back home with him and fall asleep with his face buried in the other boy’s scent.
Everything about this is different, because none of it is how you’re supposed to feel about your best friend.
“Sorry, I– I gotta go, there’s something I forgot to do,” Tim trips first over his words, then over his feet as he rushes out of the room, away from his best friend and the realisation that he’s head over heels in love with him.
–
The second time it happens, it’s because Krypto is a dirty, dirty traitor of a superdog.
Tim’s lounging on the couch in the brightly-lit living space of Titans Tower, phone in one hand while the other is absent-mindedly scratching the soft fur behind Krypto’s ears. Krypto’s lying on top of Tim, draped all over his chest with his heavy head resting right above Tim’s heart, and it’s making it a little hard to breathe; but he’s also warm and soft and Tim wouldn’t move for the world.
He feels the dog’s ears twitch before he notices the sudden absence of the sound of running water. A few minutes later, the bathroom door opens and the smell of Kon’s shampoo wafts over to him, but Tim’s smart enough not to move a muscle; certainly not his eyes. Instead, he continues to stare at his phone screen and does his best to keep his heart rate under control as he mentally lists all the character classes in Warlocks and Warriors, from his favourite to his least favourite one.
It had taken Tim the better part of two days to recover from the shattering realisation that, somewhere between Kon showing up at Tim’s house unannounced to make fun of his taste in music and meeting their twisted future selves, between midnight pizza and movie marathons, between Tim’s decision to quit Robin and Kon finding out that the human half of his DNA is none other than Lex Luthor’s, Tim had fallen for his best friend; and he’d fallen hard.
It had taken him another week after that to sort through all the confusing new thoughts and feelings that came with that realisation, only to then put them all into neat little boxes inside of his head– where he could continue to ignore them, forever. If there’s one thing that Tim’s bound to have picked up from Bruce over the years through the process of osmosis alone, it’s got to be the man’s skill for compartmentalisation, right? Right.
He’s got this.
Kon’s laugh pulls Tim from his thoughts when the other boy walks into the room and spots him and Krypto all cuddled up on the couch together, “I swear, Tim, I don’t care what Clark thinks, but the mutt likes you better than me most days.”
“Untrue,” Tim says flatly as he continues to aimlessly scroll through his Twitter feed, because it is. Krypto likes Tim well enough and Tim, in turn, enjoys the dog’s company more than that of most humans these days, but there’s no doubt in his or anyone else’s mind that Krypto adores Kon. Tim’s never said anything and he doesn’t think he ever will, but he’s convinced that Kon’s only reason for denying that simple truth is that he doesn’t want to admit that the feeling is mutual.
When Krypto jumps off the couch a moment later and trots off to who knows where, Tim laments the loss of supercanine warmth on his chest, but the normalcy of his exchange with Kon gives him hope that things can go back to the way they were before Tim discovered his not-so-platonic feelings for the other boy.
It’s one thing to fall in love with a teammate, and Tim is in the lucky position that Dick had crossed all the lines Batman had told them not to cross long before Tim ever even put on the cape– so he likes to think that he knows how to handle that part, at least. It’s a whole different story, however, to fall in love with your best friend, and it took Tim all of three seconds to decide that he would rather hand-deliver his personal laptop to the General than risk ruining the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
“Huh,” Kon huffs another laugh, and this time Tim’s brain isn’t fast enough to counteract his bordering-on-Pavlovian tendency to follow the sound of Kon’s voice, “Thanks for proving my point, I guess?”
Krypto is standing in front of Kon, wagging his tail and holding a bright blue shirt in his snout that is most definitely Tim’s, not Kon’s. Tim resists the urge to groan out loud and watches, helplessly, as Kon gives a shrug, takes the shirt out from between Krypto’s teeth, and pulls it over his head.
Druid, Warlock, Paladin, Ranger, Barbarian… Tim never makes it all the way to Bard because his brain short-circuits and all he can think about is how good Kon looks in blue. Unlike the last one of Tim’s shirts that Kon borrowed, this one isn’t quite as tight on him. In fact, compared to Kon’s usual style, it hangs almost loosely off his shoulders. Tim’s pretty sure that it’s one of those shirts that used to belong to Dick, once upon a time, and that Tim really only wears to bed.
Still, Kon makes it work, somehow, in that devil-may-care way of his that Tim could never pull off, and blue really is his colour. Of course, Tim isn’t going to tell the other boy that– not just for fear of giving away his hopeless crush on him, but because he isn’t sure where Kon stands on the whole identity crisis thing right now.
“Yup, definitely yours,” Kon snorts as he looks down at himself before raising a questioning eyebrow at Tim, “You don’t mind, right? I’m supposed to meet Clark for breakfast at some new diner in town– uh, half an hour ago.”
“No, ‘course not,” Tim waves him off, and it’s at least half-true. He doesn’t mind Kon borrowing his shirts; he doesn’t mind it at all. It’s just that therein lies the whole problem.
As soon as Kon has climbed out the window and flown off to wherever he’s meeting Clark, Tim fixes Krypto with as stern a look as he can muster and hisses, perhaps for the first time since he’s met his best friend’s other best friend, “Bad dog! Bad Krypto!”
Krypto tilts his head to the side and studies Tim for a long moment, decidedly unimpressed, before he lets out a conciliatory woof and jumps back on top of him. Tim grumbles a little and rolls his eyes when Krypto licks his cheek, but it doesn’t take long for his hand to find its way back to that one spot behind Krypto’s left ear that never fails to make the dog relax against his chest.
He’s so not got this.
–
The third time it happens, it’s an accident.
If Tim had to blame someone, or in this case something, he supposes he’d have to go with the semi-sentient alien plants that sneezed some sort of purple goo all over Kon when he made the mistake of flying a little too close to one of them. And really, the look on his best friend’s face was too priceless for Tim to harbour any ill will towards those plants.
That is, at least, until Kon – now goo-free – walks into Tim’s room about an hour later, shirtless, with his stupidly attractive hair still wet from his shower and rivulets of water running down his equally stupidly attractive chest. Kon shoots him a disgruntled look and flicks a stray strand of wet hair out of his face before he grumbles, “All of my shirts are either caked in mud from our training session this morning or drenched in alien snot. Is it cool if I borrow one of yours again?”
“Sure,” Tim’s mouth forms the word in spite of the sudden heaviness of his tongue because, well, what else is there to say except ‘No, sorry, Kon– actually you can’t, because every time I see you wearing one of my shirts, I have to sit on my hands so that I don’t go and rip it right back off you’?
Yeah, not an option.
Tim’s self-aware enough to know that he exhibits an unhealthy lack of concern for his physical and his emotional well-being, both of which seem to be a prerequisite for becoming Robin, but even he isn’t that much of a masochist. In the grand scheme of things, he figures, the temporary torture of seeing Kon in his shirts is nothing compared to the lifetime of regret he’d feel if he somehow managed to mess up their friendship for good.
“Thanks, man,” Kon pats him on the back and Tim tries not to read too much into the fact that he spends a suspicious amount of time rummaging around in Tim’s closet, until he finds the exact same shirt that Krypto had fetched for him last time.
“You wanna hang with me and Cassie tonight?” Kon asks as he smooths down the creases of the shirt that Tim’s now trying very hard not to mentally label as ‘Kon’s favourite’.
He takes a moment to contemplate the offer. The question itself is innocent enough; after all, it’s not like the three of them don’t hang out together all the time. But Kon and Cassie have an on-again-off-again relationship that Tim doesn’t know what to do with anymore, now that he’s realised that he really, really, really wants it to be off– as in, permanently.
It’s a horrible thing to wish for, Tim knows; Cassie’s great, Kon’s great, and maybe the two of them can be great together, too. With the lives they’re leading, Tim has no right to begrudge anyone their chance at happiness, least of all two of his best friends, but knowing that on a rational level unfortunately doesn’t mean that he can control the green-eyed monster that rears its ugly head every time Kon gets that soft look in his eyes when he smiles at her instead of him.
“Nah, you two go have fun on your date, I have work to do,” Tim gives Kon a half-hearted smile that he hopes looks more sincere than it feels.
Unfortunately, Kon is the one person besides Steph who can somehow always tell Tim’s real smiles from his fake ones, which is why he shouldn’t be surprised when the other boy lingers in the doorway, shuffling his feet as he asks, “Is everything okay? You look a little, I dunno... something...”
Kon looks at the ground and trails off, one hand coming up to fiddle with the little gold ring in his left ear; a nervous habit of his that Tim had catalogued long before he started looking at him as more than a friend. He almost laughs out loud, because of how shockingly similar the two of them are when it comes to their inability to deal with their own feelings as well as each other’s, and their tendency to take the easy way out and just ignore them instead.
Tim’s always thought it kind of ironic that that’s not just how they work, but why they work; a classic case of two negatives making a positive.
But right now, Kon’s trying. He’s trying for Tim’s sake, like he always does, always has done, and it makes a warm yet terrifying feeling spread through Tim’s chest at the realisation that, in a way, Kon was never just a best friend to him.
He’s reminded, all of a sudden, of something Steph told him years ago, when she was going through her ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ phase and, for some inexplicable reason, made it her mission to make Tim understand the complicated web of interpersonal relationships between the characters. He’s still not quite sure he followed her six-page essay on why McSteamy is actually dreamier than McDreamy, but it’s not like he actually tried.
“See, it’s really all about Meredith and Christina,” she’d explained, “They’re not just best friends, they’re each other’s person. Kinda like you and clone boy, I guess.”
Tim didn’t understand what Steph meant back then, but he’s starting to think that maybe he does now– because this? This right here is the reason that Kon is Tim’s person and that Tim wouldn’t have it any other way.
It’s also the reason that Tim chooses to swallow the truth about his current emotional state. He doesn’t want to guilt Kon into staying home with him instead of going out with Cassie– especially not when he can’t even explain to him why he’s feeling so exceptionally sorry for himself tonight.
“I’m fine. Just tired,” he lies.
It’s his favourite lie, too, because he knows that his tired face and his sad face look the same, in the right light. He remembers Kon making a joke once, about how he could never tell the two apart, and how Tim’s tendency to treat both with the same, tachycardia-inducing doses of caffeine didn’t help.
“‘Kay, if you say so,” Kon shrugs, but he doesn’t look convinced.
He turns to leave but before he does, he stops to glance over his shoulder at Tim once more. He fixes him with a meaningful look that could mean a lot of things or nothing at all, and adds, “And it isn’t a date, Tim. It’s, uh… it’s not like that anymore, between Cassie and me.”
Tim tries his best to not get his hopes up at that. It almost works.
–
The fourth time it happens, it can’t really be classed as an accident.
Tim’s lying in bed with his laptop on his lap, when Kon walks into his room and announces, for no discernible reason, “I’m gonna borrow a shirt.”
“O–kay?” Tim says, waiting for an explanation that never comes.
He watches as Kon walks over to his closet and starts digging around for a shirt to wear, a by now familiar feeling of nervous anticipation settling deep in his gut. Tim’s always hated the whole butterflies-in-your-stomach metaphor, all that romanticised nonsense about pretty winged creatures fluttering around and threatening to fly to freedom or whatever– why doesn’t anyone ever tell it like it is? Being in love feels like you’re about to puke. Like you’re in a constant state of being about to puke.
He’s about to tear his eyes away and go back to looking at his spreadsheets – because spreadsheets are safe, spreadsheets never make him feel like puking – when he hears Kon mutter something unintelligible and watches him stick his head a little further into the closet. There’s some rustling, a dull clunk and a muttered curse that Tim translates as Kon hitting his head against one of the metal rails, until, eventually, the other boy re-emerges. When he does, he’s holding up a sleek, black flapper dress.
Tim watches in horror as Kon runs a careful hand over the plethora of sequins and rhinestones that make the dress gleam and glisten like a starry night sky before he turns his wide eyes on Tim, “Uh, Tim? Why do you have this?”
Never before has Tim wished so badly for the ground to open up and swallow him whole.
“It– it was for a mission, okay,” Tim stutters by way of explanation, and buries his burning face in his hands, “It was just… for a mission.”
And it’s the truth. Bruce had had the dress made for him when, a year or so ago, one of their cases had required them to go undercover at a charity gala celebrating the Roaring Twenties. As a boy, Tim had been much too young to attend– but put him in a dress and a pair of heels, slap on some make-up, and his comparatively slight stature made for the perfect cover.
Except that really only explained why he once wore a dress, not why he’d decided to keep it, and certainly not why he’d brought it with him to Titans Tower, of all places.
After a minute of agonising silence, Tim hesitantly spreads his fingers to peek through them at Kon’s face. But instead of the teasing grin he expects to find, he’s met with a thoughtful expression as his best friend’s eyes dart back and forth between the dress and the pathetic little ball of shame that Tim’s curled up into. In the end, Kon simply bites his lip and declares, solemnly, “I don’t see why it has to be. Just for a mission, I mean.”
Tim’s mouth is still hanging wide open when Kon quietly puts the dress back into the closet, pulls out the non-descript grey shirt that he came here to find in the first place, and puts it on. It takes all of Tim’s mental strength and then some to stop the runaway train of his thoughts before it derails– because that’s a new and terrifying and also kind of exhilarating piece of information about his best friend that will need untangling later.
When he’s alone, and when said best friend isn’t leaning against his door frame, watching him pretend to pay attention to his long forgotten spreadsheets.
“Tim.”
“Yes, Kon?”
“Your heart’s doing that thing again.”
“Yeah. I know.”
Panic rises up in Tim’s chest and wraps its cold, ruthless fingers around his throat, stealing the breath from his lungs because Kon is about to piece everything together, any moment now, and Tim doesn’t know what to do when he does. He’s been making contingency plans since before he became Robin, much too young to be as intimately acquainted with the concept of preparing for the worst as he was. He’s got one for every conceivable turn of events, sometimes two, sometimes three; and yet, right here, right now, the one time that it really counts, he’s drawing a blank.
“I’m bored. Let’s watch something,” Kon says, out of the blue, like the last two minutes never happened.
Tim blinks.
That was… easier than expected. A little too easy, one part of Tim’s brain warns, while another shouts over the first not to look a gift horse in the mouth. He isn’t given the chance to figure out which of the two he should be listening to because Kon chooses that moment to crawl into bed with him, like he’s done a million and one times before. He takes the laptop from Tim’s trembling hands, closes the spreadsheets, and pulls up Netflix instead.
Then, he wraps one arm around Tim’s shoulders and tugs him into his chest; and Tim’s panic from a moment ago is chased away by the familiar scent of Kon’s cologne, mixed with the even more familiar one of Alfred’s laundry detergent from the shirt Kon’s wearing.
“So, are we feeling TOS or TNG tonight?” Kon yawns, and that has Tim smiling into his chest.
Kon doesn’t like Star Trek. He doesn’t understand the iconic brilliance of The Original Series, and he can’t appreciate the masterpiece of storytelling that is The Next Generation. He’s a philistine who only enjoys the Reboot, because it’s basically like Star Wars, and because, apparently, ‘the guy with the eyebrows and the anger management issues is kinda hot’.
So this is Kon indulging Tim; this is him offering to watch hours and hours of a TV show he doesn’t even like, just so that they can spend some time together, just the two of them; and Tim’s heart feels like it’s about to burst with how completely and utterly and madly in love he is with him.
“Next Gen, please,” he whispers into the crook of Kon’s neck.
“You got it,” Kon says, ruffling Tim’s hair.
Three hours later, when Q gives Data the gift of laughter, Kon has dozed off with his head leaning against Tim’s, his right arm still slung protectively around his shoulders. Tim tries to close his laptop and maneuver it onto the floor beside the bed without waking the other boy, but of course that was never going to work when said boy is a Super with superhearing and super-lots-of-other-stuff.
“Wha’ time ‘s it?” Kon mumbles sleepily.
“Time for you to go back to your own bed,” Tim chuckles and tries to push Kon out of his, because it’s what he does. It’s what he always does, and it’s not like he can suddenly stop just because his heart has decided that it never wants Kon to go back to his own bed ever again.
“M’kay,” Kon replies, but all he does is slip further under the covers. He makes a displeased noise when Tim doesn’t follow, and tugs on his sleeve until he does. Tim holds his breath when Kon rearranges them so that Tim’s back is pressed snugly against Kon’s chest, and he’s trying very hard to come up with a word for what it is that they’re doing that isn’t… spooning. He can’t think of one.
“Tim.”
“I know, Kon.”
His heart’s doing the thing again.
–
The fifth time it happens, it’s definitely not an accident.
It’s so not an accident, in fact, that Tim is beginning to recognise the glaringly obvious pattern that he’s so far somehow managed to miss and that makes him wonder whether maybe the second, third, and fourth times weren’t as accidental as Kon had him believe either.
A whole week has passed since Tim reluctantly slipped out of Kon’s embrace the morning after Kon had fallen asleep in Tim’s bed, the morning after he’d chosen to fall asleep in Tim’s bed. A whole week of Tim waiting for the other boy to corner him and demand an explanation, to sit him down and awkwardly explain that he just didn’t feel the same way, to do something – anything – other than go back to business-as-usual.
A whole week in which nothing’s happened.
Tim’s not quite ready to let his guard down just yet, but he’s beginning to think that maybe Kon really hasn’t put two and two together. It’s either that, or the other boy knows exactly why Tim’s heart keeps doing ‘that thing’ around him, and this is his way of sparing Tim the embarrassment of having to let him down easy. Tim really hopes it isn’t that– somehow, that would be so much worse than the outright rejection that he’s been steeling himself for.
Tim’s sitting at the counter in the kitchen of Titans Tower when it all starts making sense. He’s in the middle of setting up an inordinate number of hidden cameras in the abandoned-warehouse-turned-meth-lab that he’s meant to be staking out with Batman later that week; so engrossed in his task that he doesn’t take notice of another person entering the room, or of his empty coffee mug disappearing from behind his laptop screen.
Not until Kon announces, a little too loudly, “Here, I refilled your– oops!”
Tim blinks at his best friend and the hot coffee he’s just spilled all over his shirt, and he can tell right away that there’s something wrong with the picture in front of him; he’s just not sure what it is. It’s not that Kon never has his clumsy moments– he doesn’t have them often, none of them do, clumsiness isn’t exactly a common trait in their line of work, but Tim had been there when Kon was still figuring out how to use his TTK.
It all clicks into place when Kon bites his lip, a hint of colour in his cheeks that might pass for sheepishness if only it were anyone else, and says, “Guess I’m gonna have to borrow another one of your shirts?”
And oh, Tim was so going to get him back for this.
–
It’s past midnight and everyone else in the Tower is fast asleep when Tim watches Kon stumble into his darkened room after an impromptu trip to Metropolis to help Superman thwart Parasite’s latest ploy to suck the life force out of their city. He didn’t even have the time to change out of the bright blue shirt he’d stolen from Tim’s closet earlier, after the coffee incident; his favourite, although it’s looking a little worse for wear now.
Tim’s sitting on Kon’s bed, leaning against the headboard with a glass of red wine in one hand and a book in the other; the pale light of the moon filtering in through the open window just about bright enough for him to make out the words on its pages.
He’s also wearing his dress, and a matching pair of black heels.
“Hey, Kon,” Tim’s lips quirk upwards when Kon spots him and instantly stops dead in his tracks. He puts the book down and takes a small sip of his wine, savouring the sweet taste of revenge.
“Uh, hey, Tim,” Kon replies, but he sounds uncertain, like he isn’t quite sure what to make of the scene in front of him. His eyes dart around the room nervously, as though he’s trying to make sure that this is, in fact, his room and he hasn’t accidentally walked into Tim’s instead.
“How was Metropolis?” Tim asks, calm as ever. Or, well, at least a lot calmer now that he’s on the other side of this charade of theirs and gets to give Kon a little taste of his own medicine.
“F–fine?” Kon stutters, but it comes out as more of a question than a statement, “Is that– are you drinking wine? How the hell did you manage to smuggle wine into the Tower?”
“Really, Kon?” Tim aks as he swings his bare legs over the side of the bed and walks with slow, deliberate steps to where Kon is standing, still rooted to the spot, “Is that really what you want to be talking about right now?”
“I… don’t know?”
“You better make up your mind then,” Tim replies, a hint of annoyance creeping into his voice, “Because I’m kind of done playing your game.”
Tim’s about to push past Kon and out of the room, back towards his own. He isn’t sure what kind of reaction he’d come here hoping for, but he knows he’s made his point and he’s always found that the concept of a tactical retreat is tragically underrated in their line of work.
A strong hand around his wrist stops him from leaving. This time, Kon won’t need to rely on his superhearing to know that Tim’s heart is beating out of his chest; he must be able to feel it where his fingers are pressed against the pulse point of Tim’s wrist. His voice sounds hoarse and just a little disbelieving when he asks, “Wait, Tim. Are you– are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
And Tim’s about had it with the ridiculous dance that the two of them have been doing around each other; he’s done with the tiptoeing, and the beating around the bush, and this warped game of chicken that he’s let the other boy rope him into instead of just admitting that Kon and his stupid grin, and his stupid piercings, and his stupid big clone heart are all he ever thinks about.
So he throws caution to the wind, and spins around to push Kon against the wall, smirking at the surprised ‘oof’ the sudden impact startles out of the other boy, “What does it look like, you complete moron? I don’t want to be your best friend– I haven’t, for a while. And I don’t think you want to be mine either.”
“No,” Kon murmurs as his hands wrap around Tim’s waist on instinct, pulling Tim flush against him, “I really don’t.”
“Then why don’t you do something about it,” Tim looks up at his not-best-friend expectantly, rolling his eyes a little when he adds, “Preferably something that doesn’t involve stealing any more of my shirts.”
Kon laughs at that, and Tim can feel the echo of it reverberate against his chest, “You knew.”
“Not at first. But you weren’t exactly subtle when you not-so-accidentally spilled my coffee all over yourself this morning– in all the years I’ve known you, you have never made me coffee, Kon. Not once.”
“I could start?”
“I’d like that,” Tim says, his turn to laugh now.
His heart skips another beat when Kon lets his hands travel up and down Tim’s back, tentatively, almost shyly, like he can’t quite believe he’s allowed to touch Tim like this, not yet. It’s oddly endearing, this other side of him, the unbelievable softness that lies beneath his usual, stubborn pretense of stoicism; and Tim selfishly hopes that he’ll be the only one who ever gets to see him like this.
In the end, it’s the furious blush on Kon’s face that Tim is certain matches his own that gives him the courage to tug at the hem of his shirt and say, “But right now, I really want my shirt back.”
It takes a moment for Tim’s words to sink in, but when they do, Kon grins that grin of his that Tim loves so much. He carefully takes the wine glass out of Tim’s hand and places it on the drawer next to them, before he slings one arm around Tim’s waist and lifts him off the ground. Tim doesn’t need to think twice before he wraps his legs around Kon’s hips like that’s what they were made to do, letting the dress ride up high on his thighs.
Then, Kon leans down to capture Tim’s wine-stained lips in a heated kiss before he whispers against them, “Thought you’d never ask, Wonder Boy.”