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Conner hates being undercover. It used to be that he had too much baggage for it—lying to himself, struggling to understand who he was supposed to be, the discomfort of forcing himself into a secret identity. These days he’s past a lot of that, but he’s still always worried he’s going to screw it up. Too easy to let something slip by accident and blow his cover, or… well, maybe Ma is right about needing to trust himself.
He's here because Tim needs him, after all. There’s been something haunting a club in downtown Gotham, Tim had explained to him, something disappearing young men and women from back rooms without a trace. Tim hasn’t been able to find anything but rumors—no cars in and out of the alleys behind the club, no secret doors into hidden basements, no traces of blood or of drugs that might be used to subdue victims. By all accounts, young people found their way into the private rooms, in pairs or with older partners who later had no recollection of anything between entering and leaving, and simply vanished.
Tim’s working theory is that it’s the handiwork of a metahuman or, more likely, a demon. Conner really hopes it’s not a demon. He hates magic even more than he hates being undercover, and he really hates being undercover right now.
Right now, Tim is curled up beside him on a leather couch tucked into a corner of the club, sharp eyes scanning past the crowd mingling in the open space in front of the bar, locked on the hallway leading to the private rooms. Conner himself is having trouble keeping his gaze in the same place—the club that Tim had dragged him to is a very particular kind of club, and Conner is finding the juxtaposition of the casual chatter between some patrons and the public paddlings taking place between others… distracting.
“You’re supposed to be my eyes and ears,” Tim reminds him, slipping one gloved hand up Conner’s bare chest and leaning in so that his lips are nearly pressed to Conner’s ear. It drags an involuntary shudder out of him, a wave of heat rolling down his front, and Conner ducks his head, trying to put space between them. It backfires spectacularly when Tim slides that gloved hand up to his jaw and turns Conner’s face into the crook of his neck, letting his head fall back as Conner’s lips brush his throat just above the black leather of the collar fastened there. “Acting, Conner. Try.”
“Fuck you,” Conner mutters, trying to ignore the way his face is heating and his pulse is pounding rapidly.
“I doubt we’re going to have to take it that far,” Tim replies, and Conner gets a sinking feeling that the tiny, subvocal noise Tim makes when Conner sighs heavily against his neck is the only victory he’s going to wring out of this night. He’d lost from the moment Tim had held up the heavy leather collar to him and he’d balked, and he hasn’t recovered since. It seems pointless to argue when Tim continues, “just put your hand on my hip and focus for me.”
Following those simple instructions is harder than Conner cares to admit. Several deep breaths are necessary to settle him to the point where the hand Tim has snuck into his hair fades into the background, shifting from distracting to grounding as Tim strokes slowly from the crown of his head to the back of his neck.
His awareness of their clothes, their bodies, starts to go next. It’s an achievement, really—it’s been nearly impossible for him to get his mind off of Tim’s outfit. There are the tight black pants tucked into knee-high combat boots and the intricate harness he’s layered under a tank top so loose and shredded Conner doubts it even qualifies as a shirt anymore, and that’s bad enough for Conner’s heart and his fraying self-control. Worse, though, are the accessories: bracelets and cuffs layered over long, fingerless gloves, fake—definitely fake, he insists to himself—jewelry glinting on his half-exposed nipples, and the collar, the stupid collar around his neck, the heft of it somehow emphasizing the elegant curves of his throat and collarbones, attached to a leash that’s been wrapped around Conner’s fist since they entered the club. The makeup artfully smeared around his eyes and the messy tousle of his hair softens his face, transforms him from sharply handsome to alluringly pretty, and Conner has to force himself to let go of the image of Tim’s soft, pouty lower lip caught between his teeth as they’d walked into the club, the way he had glanced up at Conner from under his lashes as he suggested they find someplace quiet to start.
Only slightly easier to forget is the vague embarrassment of his own disguise. Tim had gone with a play on his old leather jacket, this time sleeveless and involving leather pants tucked into a pair of combat boots less decorative than Tim’s. The leather vest hangs open, revealing the musculature of his chest and stomach, and his only other accessories are a pair of short leather gloves and two wide leather bands hugging his biceps. He feels, frankly, slightly ridiculous—he’s positive he’s seen this outfit on the cover of an old porno before—but it seems to have worked well enough, more people ogling his arms and abs than bothering to glance at his face.
Tim was right, as usual—as he settles further, it gets easier to tune out what’s actually going on, let his senses widen. He can forget that he’d put his hand on Tim’s hip as he’d been told to, how they’re pressed together, that Tim is half in his lap by now. When his pulse stops pounding in his ears, he can filter through the chatter on the floor, the conversations mingling oddly with moans and wails. What he catches, eventually, isn’t so much a sound as… the lack thereof.
“It’s quiet,” he says, and he feels Tim’s hum more than hears it, a low vibration in his chest that spikes Conner’s pulse all over again.
“Conner.” Tim taps the back of Conner’s neck lightly with a polished nail, pulling his attention back, and Conner suppresses the surge of unfair irritation that Tim somehow always knows even though Conner is the one with superpowers.
“It’s too quiet. There’s no sound in the back rooms, no voices, no heartbeats, not even bugs crawling. Either something is blocking my senses or there’s something very wrong with those rooms.”
“We need to get closer,” Tim says, easing himself out of Conner’s lap and back onto the couch beside him. Conner’s fist tightens reflexively around the leash, pulling Tim up short, and Tim’s pretty eyes narrow at him, unimpressed. “That part is pretend, Conner. I don’t have time to renegotiate our relationship right now.”
Flushing hard, Conner loosens his grasp, lets the leash slip nearly all the way through his fingers before giving it a light tug. When Tim looks at him again, Conner sets his jaw, determined not to let Tim run roughshod over him. “You need to be careful. Something isn’t right.”
Tim looks ready to make a snippy remark, snatch his leash out of Conner’s hand and march himself over to the private rooms without a backward glance, disguises and danger be damned. When Conner doesn’t flinch, holds his gaze, something seems to shift between them, and the line of Tim’s shoulders softens. Rather than taking off to confront whatever’s been lurking at the back of the club, Tim eases backwards, a controlled, languid fall into the arm of the couch that invites Conner to follow him.
Conner isn’t quite sure what he’s doing as he leans in over Tim, props himself up on an elbow against the arm of the couch, bracketing Tim’s head. His free hand rests on Tim’s knee, and Tim’s eyes are steady on him, open and curious despite the faint flush that rises to his cheeks as Conner’s hand trails upwards, his fingers splayed wide and possessive across Tim’s thigh. The sweep of his thumb across Tim’s inner thigh would be impossible to mistake for friendly even before Conner squeezes once, hard enough that he hears Tim’s breath hitch and his pulse spike.
Tim’s head drops back against the couch, eyes fluttering closed as Conner hears him breathe a careful pattern. His hands find Conner’s shoulders before he opens his eyes, and the way his fingers twine at the nape of Conner’s neck is almost as intoxicating as the look on his face as his gaze drops to Conner’s lips.
“Maybe we do need to renegotiate,” he concedes, and Conner’s heart leaps, a wild, soaring sensation filling his chest so fast it leaves him giddy. His thoughts scatter, leaves in the wind, and it’s all he can do to grin down at Tim, bite his lip to avoid kissing him with the kind of gleeful, giggling overexuberance that would definitely get them noticed in here. Tim grins back, but then schools his face into something more sultry, glancing towards the private rooms again.
“Let’s go get this taken care of, alright?” There’s a wicked sparkle in his eye when he looks back at Conner. Arching off the couch until he’s close enough for Conner to feel the heat radiating off him, he puts his lips to Conner’s ear, the low rasp of his voice sending a happy shiver down Conner’s spine. “I promise I’ll stay close.”
“I—okay,” Conner says, agreeing before he quite computes what that’s going to entail. Tim smiles up at him, soft and fond again for a moment, and Conner feels dazed and only faintly annoyed at how easy it is for Tim to turn him to putty in his clever hands. The annoyance fades entirely when Tim tilts his head up, jaw angled so that all but the last inch of space between their lips is gone. Conner feels his breath catch in his chest, silly and thrilled at what Tim is offering him, and tries not to float right off the couch as he closes that final gap and presses his lips to Tim’s.
Their first kiss is a slow, careful thing. Under the circumstances, it would be easy to get carried away—there are plenty of things much raunchier than this happening around them, and Conner certainly wants to push his hands under Tim’s pathetic excuse for a shirt, to toy with the metal glinting at his nipples, to grind down against him and hear him gasp, but… there will be time for all of that later. Right now, what Conner wants more than anything is to savor the way Tim sighs against his lips, wraps his arms around Conner’s neck like he’s finally, finally getting something he’s been waiting for and isn’t in any hurry to let go. Conner hasn’t often felt that way, like he’s treasured, deeply wanted, and he lingers in that sweet, glowing feeling for as long as he can, lets Tim keep kissing him for as long as he wants to.
Then Tim is slipping his fingers under Conner’s palm where it’s still resting on his thigh, pressing the leash back into Conner’s hand as he pulls back with a smile that’s downright radiant. Conner basks in it until Tim tugs lightly at his hair, looking sly.
“Stay in character, sir,” he says, voice husky and eyelashes fluttering. Conner rolls his eyes as he wraps the leash back around his fist, reeling Tim in until Conner’s knuckles brush his throat and Conner can claim his mouth in a deeper, rougher kiss, more for show this time. Show or not, Tim is flushed and breathing hard when they break apart, and Conner finds himself looking forward to Tim making him regret his smirk later.
“Come on,” Conner says, tugging the leash as he backs up, pulling Tim up with him.
He’s having fun teasing Tim with the leash, but as they rise, picking their way out and across the floor, he’s careful not to yank or keep much pressure on it, holding it loosely in his fist so Tim will be able to break away as he needs to. Tim stays a half step behind him, letting him lead, but Conner knows where to look to see that there’s absolutely nothing submissive in his posture—he’s eagle-eyed, ready to act at a moment’s notice, letting Conner tow him along only as a convenience so that he doesn’t need to flirt and tease his way across the room to keep the act up. Conner doesn’t mind. He usually prefers to have Tim in charge, easier to follow Tim’s orders than to summon up the confidence to lead, but he’s eager to finish the night, so he keeps his stride quick and confident, pulling Tim along behind him into the dark.
**
It turns out to be a magician who summoned a demon, because of course it would be. Conner hates Gotham. His only bits of luck in the fight are that the people who had been kidnapped are still alive and that the magician hadn’t collected enough of them yet to summon the master of the first demon, which would have rocketed the whole ordeal from “huge pain in the ass” straight to “minor disaster.”
By the time they’ve ousted the demon, subdued the magician, gotten the missing patrons to the EMTs, and ensured that someone is helping them get in touch with their loved ones, the club is empty of all but a few of the staff and a unit of police officers. Tim and Conner slip away a bit worse for wear—Tim has a new bruise blossoming on his jaw and a shallow cut that stretches diagonally from his collarbone to his ribs, and Conner is thoroughly singed and favoring his left side as he floats Tim to the top of a tall building several streets over.
“You have to admit, that could have gone worse,” Tim says, eyeing Conner as he limps towards an edge of the roof less visible from the street.
“Easy for you to say. You got to fight the dweeby magician while I kept the scary fire demon off your back.”
“You’ll feel better in the morning,” Tim assures him as he follows Conner across the roof, settling himself next to Conner. He sits closer than he usually would, Conner thinks, their shoulders brushing as he situates himself, and Conner has to stare at the place where their dangling ankles bump for a moment before he can find the thread of the conversation again.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine once I get out of your home sweet hellhole and get some actual sun again.”
“It’s supposed to be clear tomorrow,” Tim says, a note in his voice that Conner can’t place. Cocking his head to try to get a look at Tim’s face, he finds that Tim’s hair, still longer these days than he ever kept it when they were kids, obscures his expression.
“Oh yeah?” he asks, unsure if Tim means what Conner wants him to mean. His pulse is rising even though the action is long over, and he wishes, not for the first time, that he could use his x-ray vision to see inside of Tim’s head, read the words that he won’t let himself say.
“You could get your sun here. If you wanted to,” Tim says. Conner hears him swallow, realizes that it’s not just his own pulse pounding in his ears—he can hear Tim’s, too, thundering along beside his own, and a jolt of exhilaration almost sends him floating off the building and into the damp, starless Gotham night. “You wouldn’t have to go home.”
Taking a deep breath, Conner reaches down between their bodies, feeling along the concrete until he finds Tim’s hand. Tim is holding his breath, Conner can tell, and he stays frozen as Conner coaxes Tim’s hand into his own, lacing their fingers together.
“If it was just—if you don’t want to, I get it,” Tim blurts out before Conner has a chance to say anything. “If it was just… being in there, the atmosphere, you were in character, and you don’t actually—it’s fine. I’ll understand.”
“It wasn’t just the atmosphere,” Conner says, quiet, and when Tim turns to him, there’s a look of such naked hope on his face that it makes Conner’s chest ache. Curling in towards Tim, he ignores the dull protest of his ribs as he lifts a hand to Tim’s jaw and presses their foreheads together. “It wasn’t for show, Tim. I—can I kiss you?”
“Yeah,” Tim whispers, and Conner can feel Tim’s hand shaking slightly where it curls around his wrist. “Please.”
It’s just as good as that first kiss in the club—better, Conner thinks, because this time Tim has dropped the easy, flirty confidence. It’s a little clumsier, and the sincerity when Tim leans into him fills him with a sweet sort of warmth. He can’t help wrapping his arms around Tim, pulling him in tight and cupping the back of his head as he deepens the kiss, and Tim rewards him with a soft, needy noise, sounding almost wounded as he buries his fingers in Conner’s hair.
“I don’t wanna go home,” Conner murmurs when they part, and he loves hearing the skip in Tim’s heartbeat, feeling Tim’s fingers tighten in his hair. This close, he can only catch the edge of Tim’s smile, but his eyes scrunch the way they only do when he’s really happy, and that tells Conner everything he needs to know.
“Then don’t,” Tim suggests, and leans in to kiss him again.