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Chapter Text

Six months ago…

"Happy Lex Luthor Goes to Jail Day!" Supergirl yells as she floats up and unfurls the twelve-foot GUILTY banner over the buffet table.

The crowd of heroes cheers and whistles, and Flash streaks through the crowd to hand out party poppers. Kon pulls his, then laughs and ducks as Clark grabs him around the shoulders and tries to ruffle his hair.

"Long may he rot!" Green Lantern shouts (Kyle? There are a bunch of them and he was a little overwhelmed during the introductions. This one is Kyle, unless it’s not), and hits the music.

Thank God, someone with taste, Kon thinks as loud dance pop echoes through the glowing green speakers. Not that Clark isn't great, but he really doesn't know how to plan a party. If they'd put him in charge he'd probably be playing Sinatra and serving Jell-O salad between rounds of bingo.

The Lex Luthor verdict countdown party was all Kara's idea. 

She dropped by early in the trial to find Kon pacing in front of Lois' television watching the news. He didn't even realize he was doing it: he was surfing the channels since nothing interesting was playing on MTV, then he heard Luthor's voice and everything else kind of…stopped.

Mentally, he knows he doesn't have to care what Luthor says any more, now that Superman has his back and he's officially Kryptonian, not an undocumented alien clone. But after spending his entire life on edge at Luthor's every word, he quickly found out he can't turn the instinct off in a hurry.

(“You’re lucky you make such good publicity, god knows you’re no good for anything else...”

“At least you’re marginally useful as a test subject.”

“The only reason you’re still around is because Nintendo would ask questions if you didn’t turn up—”)

He couldn't look away—the next thing he knew, Kara was yanking the TV plug out of the wall.

“Enough of that,” she declared as he stared at her blankly, then hauled him out of the building. "You're my fake kid brother, after all," she said as she led him to the gates of the Metropolis Arena for a women's basketball game. "We need to be seen together."

After that, Kara visited Metropolis whenever she could to distract him from the trial, ending with the huge party on the day of the verdict. And by that point it was pretty clear what the verdict was going to be (although Kon still couldn’t help feeling on edge: this is Luthor, after all). 

Obviously they don't actually call it the Rot In Pieces Party, or the Go To The Hell Luthor Party, or (Lois' suggestion) the Karma's a Bitch And She’s Here To Collect Party. Not officially. When Kara rents the building, a remote lodge at a country-style conference resort in the mountains upstate, it's under the incredibly boring title of Crime Prevention Strategy Development Conference And Professional Networking Luncheon.

Which, just like Kon's status as Superman's cousin and Kara's younger brother, isn't not true.

It feels like half the Justice League is there…but no Batman, of course. Parties and Bats don't mix: Kon thinks seeing a single disco ball might give him an aneurysm, let alone hearing decent music. 

At first Kon thinks none of the Gotham crew decided to join at all. He knows Robin doesn't like the spotlight either (and there’s always the chance Batman grounded him again), but it still stings a little. He thought he’d realize how important this was…but he can understand that Bat Stuff takes priority. 

He just doesn’t have to like it.

Without Robin, there's hardly anyone else there close to his age. Except Green Arrow, who is very cool in the martial arts department but was apparently raised in an honest-to-god monastery. With, like…monks. And absolutely no TV. His idea of a hot night out is probably meditating next to a bonfire.

The trick shots are incredible (and as a bonus he's very cute), but a relatable conversationalist he is not.

Then, about two hours in, Nightwing arrives with Batgirl and most of the Titans. 

"The party is officially here!" Cyborg announces as he fires a confetti cannon into the vaulted roof.

Robin doesn't enter with them, but when Kon takes a closer look through the building a few minutes later he sees him perched on a corner crossbeam, the black cape standing out in sharp gothic angles against the white Tudor walls. When he catches Kon looking at him he raises a gloved hand to wave.

Kon floats up and swoops through the rafters past red-and-blue streamers. Robin smiles as Kon lands next to him on the broad oak beam. "Thought you weren't coming, Birdie," Kon says, looking down at the mask.

Most people would probably find it weird, being best friends with someone and never seeing his face—being in love with him, even, getting weird warm flutters every time he smiles.

But if there's one thing Kon learned about the whole mess with Luthor, it's that trust has nothing to do with faces.

He’s so used to the mask that sometimes he almost forgets there’s anything actually under it. The green vinyl clings so naturally to Robin’s face that it almost seems part of him, and it's flexible enough to shift when he emotes.

And it sets off the lines of his face so well…

The only thing that's strange are the eyes. The flat frosted lenses are unnerving if Kon doesn't remind himself to expect them. They make it hard to tell where he's looking, or, if he's bleeding and not moving…whether he's conscious at all. Or alive.

The second night they met, Kon caught Robin out of the air still and silent and stared down into the blank white lenses, waiting for him to breathe and wondering why it suddenly mattered so much.

Robin scoots closer—the rims of the lenses shift a little with his smile, softening the intimidating angle the mask was made with—and Kon braces an arm against the wall behind his head. Leaning this close, he can just tell Robin has eyes behind the lenses, but not what color. The mystery is exciting in its own way, and he finds himself staring until Robin flushes a little and breaks eye contact.

"I wanted to surprise you," Robin says as his heartbeat ripples a little. "I'd never miss this."

Robin looks down and waves across the room: besides the dance floor forming in front of Green Lantern's speakers, Nightwing is starting a Twister showdown with Batgirl and Beast Boy, Cyborg and Flash are tinkering with the soda fountain (Kon catches the incredibly promising words 'slushee bazooka'), Superman is showing off Krypto's tricks for Shazam, Wonder Girl is hurling handfuls of olives in the air for Green Arrow to shoot, and Wonder Woman, Starfire and Hawkgirl are in the middle of a flexing competition.

"They really know how to party," Kon says, sliding his arm down and around Robin's shoulders, his fingers running over the smooth aerodynamic weave of the cape. "Except Superman. All Kara let him do was bring ice cream cake. Speaking of…" 

Kon checks to make sure Robin is actually looking, then dives down with a snazzy flip to snatch up a couple of the generous portions Kara is slicing off. "Caramel and rocky road,” he announces as he swoops back up and hands Robin a plate. “He does know how to make a cake."

Robin laughs. For a few minutes they just sit in silence, eating ice cream and watching the happy chaos.

In those heady early days, before Luthor showed his true colors and Kon really believed the ridiculous story he'd been told to keep him complacent, he thought the raucous swirl of the celebrity lifestyle was all he needed to be happy. And even after that—after he understood he was doomed—he still kept trying to convince himself. Might as well have fun while it lasted, right? And at least it kept him thinking about how fast his future was running out.

Then a Bat-tourist arrived from Gotham, and Kon discovered what he was actually missing was someone he could sit next to and do absolutely nothing.

Kon zaps a flying olive with his heat vision before it can land on Robin's plate. "Watch it!"

Shazam looks up at them and waves. "Sorry!" He shouts, then turns back to Beast Boy. "Okay, so we've confirmed juggling isn't part of the Wisdom of Solomon. What was next?"

Robin laughs. "I'm surprised you're not the center of attention," he says after the last few bites of ice cream are gone. "Isn't this mostly your party?"

Kon shrugs. "I'm happy Kara set it all up. It's great—I didn't want to be by myself today, for sure. But it's just…not as simple for me as everybody else."

Robin's eyebrows go up.

"Because of, you know. The whole thing."

"Ah."

Besides Kon, probably only about five of thirty people in the room know the full extent of the situation. As far as everyone else is concerned, Lex is finally getting what he deserves (for a few years, anyway, until he can get out on appeal), and Kon is an innocent, manipulated victim whose only mistake was crash landing in the wrong backyard.

And it's not that Lex doesn't deserve it, obviously. But Lex made Kon. He wouldn't exist without the illegal experiments Lex is going down for. And he knows how easily he could have given in and been exactly what Lex wanted: another weapon to use against Superman. 

If he hadn't made the right choices—if Robin had seen him as an enemy, as he probably deserved, instead of trying to help someone who could kill him with a look—this party could have been about Kon in a very different way.

Robin's gloved hands brush his as he takes the plate. "Careful, you break things when you're upset." Logically, he shouldn't be able to make the eerie white lenses look reassuring, but he manages it somehow as he looks up at Kon. "You don't owe him anything, I promise."

Kon sighs and curls up on the beam, resting his arms on his knees. "Like don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled he's in jail and I hope he stays there. He can rot for all I care. It's just…" He shrugs. "Complicated."

“Well, if you’re not in the party mood…” Robin pokes Kon in the side and nods towards a propped-open skylight. “Maybe we could go somewhere more private?”

"Sure your chaperone won't mind?"

They both look down at Nightwing, now dancing pressed so close between Batgirl and Starfire that it's probably illegal in several of the more boring states.

"...No, I think we're good."

They kiss a little, on the roof, but mostly Kon just looks at Robin, watching the sun set behind him. The light pushes soft gold highlights through his hair and across the mask, almost making the lenses glow. When he leans in slowly and kisses just where the green vinyl meets his forehead Kon can actually hear the tiny, tantalizing brush of Robin's lashes as he blinks behind the mask.

The way Robin is sitting, leaning on one hand with his legs tucked to the side, makes the enveloping cape fall behind his shoulders to pool on the roof, exposing him far more than he usually allows when he’s in the costume.

Kon has seen a lot of Robin before in his various disguises—most notably the time Kon had to try to keep his mind functional while Robin was wearing a skirt with a slit high enough that there was very little left to the imagination every time he took a step. But somehow seeing him like this: the cape slipping away to display the sleek material of the Robin suit, the contrast piping tracing the lines of his chest and legs, the scar seaming one bicep under his sleeve…it’s even more intense, because it’s more real.

Of course, nothing about Robin can be entirely real, not with the safety of the Bats on the line. But Kon thinks he can live with this for now: even if Robin offered to take the mask off, Kon doesn't want to push him before he's ready.

And there's an undeniable appeal in flirting with a dangerous masked man… 

Robin grabs Kon’s jacket with his free hand and pulls. “Are you going to kiss me again, or just keep staring?”

Right. Priorities.

“How’s staying with Lois going?” Robin asks, once they take a break from kissing to just lay on the roof watching the sunset.

“Oh.” The stress of the trial almost made Kon forget about that particular issue. “Oh. That. Oh god.”

“I thought you liked Lois…?” Robin says slowly.

“Of course I like Lois!” Kon rolls over and pushes up on his elbows to face Robin. “She’s great! She’s awesome! She’s getting way better at Mario Kart! But…” he sighs and flops back down on the roof, burying his face in his arms with an anguished moan. “Birdie, if I have to third wheel her and C—Superman one more single day I will explode and die.”

“Oh god, that bad.” Robin speaks in a deep, serious tone that Kon has figured out Bats use when they're trying desperately not to laugh.

"Worse. I can't take this much longer."

It's not that they don't want him around. In fact, Kon thinks he might be part of the reason they're back together, since apparently Superman being dead broke them up for a while. And Kon loves that they're trying to include him and take him on outings, he really does. But they are so freakin' adorable and as a teenager raised by Metropolis' most cynical billionaire he just cannot handle that level of sweetness and earnestness. 

Last week when he got back from going riding with Kara (Where's my flying horse, universe, any time now just saying) they were actually slowdancing. To Elvis. And…floating.

Kon thought he might die on the spot from how cute it was. Instead he made a few theatrical gagging sounds and fled to his room.

“I can’t stay there…but I can’t ask her to pay for an apartment, they’re already spending enough helping me out…” 

Lois even bought the Nintento Kon’s been using to tutor her in Mario Kart strategy, and he can’t even repay her for that, let alone rent his own place. Being Luthor's secret clone propaganda weapon wasn't exactly a paid position, unless ‘still being alive’ counted as a salary. And Kon can't sue Luthor for damages without putting said secret at risk of leaking. 

So, ever since Luthor's arrest, he's been flat broke apart from the last of the spending money the police let him retrieve from the penthouse when he went back for his stuff. (Not that he wanted any of Luthor's stupid toys: all he kept was the rack of spare suits and his posters.) And, even if she'd taken it, which she didn't, seventy dollars wouldn't have covered so much as the extra groceries Lois bought the first week. It would go nowhere in terms of setting out on his own 

Kon sighs and looks up to find the white lenses only inches from his face: Robin pulls his hand back before he can touch Kon's hair, and Kon pretends he doesn't notice. Robin likes kissing (a lot) but he's still tentative about all the other touchy stuff that tends to come with it. Probably comes of being raised by Gotham's poster boy for not having a life, Kon thinks. And, well, Kon's good at the touchy stuff himself but still has a lot to learn about the feelings part, so he figures between them they make one moderately functional…whatever this relationship is. 

“What I need is a job," he says. "Is Pizza Hut hiring?”

“I don’t actually work at Pizza Hut,” Robin says as he sits up. "I keep telling you this."

Kon remembers. But he also really liked the uniform, so he's hoping if he hints enough times Robin might dig that particular disguise out again. “Batman?”

“Somehow I don't think you'd pass the stealth test.” 

“Darn.” He sighs and puts his chin in his hands. "Maybe I could go freelance…I could probably still do commercials. But I can't run a business out of Lois' apartment, so. Back to square one."

"I...might have some ideas," Robin says.

"About that, or about…" Kon raises his eyebrows hopefully.

"Oh, definitely about that too," Robin says, but just as he leans down to kiss Kon again something starts beeping loudly from his belt. "Damn it."

"Bat-curfew?" Kon floats up and rolls, wrapping his arms around Robin's neck from behind. "That's rough." Lois hasn't put down much in the way of house rules as long as he cleans up after himself, although she did make it clear that if he's ever gone all night she'll assume he's been abducted and send out a super search party.

"Yeah, I've got—" Kon kisses his temple just next to the mask and Robin jolts with a tiny gasp, gelled spikes brushing Kon’s cheek. "I've got school tomorrow so I'm doing early patrol. Have to be back in Gotham by 8. So I need to get moving if I'm going to make it out of the mountains…" Robin finally pushes Kon away and stands up, smoothing out the cape.

Kon shifts into a kneeling position on the roof and grabs a corner of the cape before Robin can move. Robin takes a step back and looks down, the last of the sunset playing across his face, and suddenly it hits Kon how this must look, him at Robin's feet and clinging to his trailing cloak like he's pledging his love in some cheesy fantasy movie…

Robin would definitely be annoyed if he realized that Kon is casting him as Maid Marian in this scenario, so he doesn't say that. "I can fly you back?" he offers instead, in a way that was supposed to sound smooth and suggestive but is totally not either thing.

"It's okay," Robin says. "I have to think about some stuff. Besides, I can't take you away from your party…" Kon shrugs and stares down at the roof, and Robin twitches the edge of the cape in his grasp until he looks up. "They're all here for you. Let them show it. Besides, you shouldn't hide the whole time, you'll ruin your rep."

"Fine," Kon grumbles, standing up and looking out over the forest. "I guess I'll have to go and teach them how to really party. But only because you're making—"

When he turns back, Robin is gone.

"Bats," he sighs, but he can’t help smiling.

After the party, two weeks go by without anything much happening. Normally, Kon would be bored—okay, he still is bored, it's not his fault somebody messed up in the lab when they were measuring out attention spans. But, compared to the trial and the constant tension, it's a weirdly nice kind of bored. It's nice to be able to just sack out on the couch in front of the tv again without worrying he'll hear Luthor's voice on the news and go into a panic fugue state.

(SNL even did it once! Freaking SNL! And worse, it wasn't even a good impersonation, Kon is apparently just that messed up.)

So on the whole he's happy the whole thing is finally over and he can relax. Do normal human stuff and…normal-er super stuff, instead of being Luthor’s pet alien playing pretend at heroics.

He plays Scrabble with Lois as she tries to convince him 'these are totally valid spellings, you just didn't learn them in clone indoctrination school' (nice try—'Molidinum', seriously). 

He goes to a seeing eye dog school with Superman for a donation drive (if there is a clone heaven it had better be made of Labrador retrievers). 

He even flies up with Kara to visit the second clone on the Watchtower, though he's not lucid enough to handle meeting someone with his same face yet (Kon can't bring a real Labrador into space so he leaves an armful of Beanie Babies with the Martian Manhunter). 

On the whole, Kon thinks his life could be declared pretty damn chill. Though there still is the little issue of freeloading with half of the super-sappiest couple in Metropolis.

Maybe there’s the tiniest sting of jealousy that…with all the Bat-secrets, he and Robin can't have what Lois and Clark are enjoying so much. But just thinking that makes him feel like a jerk, so he tries not to dwell on it. Even if Robin is being a little distant outside of Bat-pager messages (apparently he meant it about needing to think about stuff), Kon has plenty to occupy his time.

After a Sunday night drive-in movie, Kara drops him off in Metropolis before heading downtown for a charity dinner at the botanical gardens. Kon was invited, but decided listening to rich people talk about how important ferns are was not his thing. Not that he doesn’t support, you know, plants in general. That sounds important. To…science stuff. 

Get that cash, ferns. Make it rain.

“Lois!” he calls up the stairs as he swoops up towards her front door. “I got your mail. It all looks boring, but…”

"Kon? I’m in here."

Lois sounds tense. This is what Kon has categorized as the ‘concerned cool aunt’ voice, meaning something is up. He drops the mail on the couch and leans into the kitchen: Lois is perched on the counter with a notebook, so story inspiration must have struck her in the middle of doing the dishes. 

Kon floats over to the sink and starts rinsing. "What's up—whoa!" A Lion King glass bursts in his hand and they both stare down at the remnants on the floor. "Still learning," Kon mutters, and looks for the broom.

“You got a phone call today,” Lois says in a slow careful way as he picks up the last glass shards.

Kon manages not to dump them all over the floor again when he jolts. Of course it’s not really a secret that he’s staying with Lois, and probably plenty of news colleagues have her number. Someone calling for Kon on Lois’ phone shouldn’t be a surprise.

It doesn’t mean—

(“I hope you’ve had fun on your little excursion, ‘Superboy’. How is Miss Lane, by the way?”)

It’s—probably fine. Probably.

“I…” Kon feels meaninglessly proud that his hands aren’t even shaking when he pours the broken glass pieces into the trash can. “I wasn’t. Expecting one.”

“Do you know a Tiffany?”

The broom snaps as he picks it up. “Oh gosh, sorry, I’ll get a new one—yeah, Tiffany, uh, last name Winter? I know her. Kinda.” Freakin’ warn a guy, Robin, what the heck.

“She says her…cousin? Wants to meet with you. For a business opportunity.” Lois taps her eraser against the notebook, frowning doubtfully. “But you don’t have to go, of course, it’s so obviously a scam—”

“Oh no I’ll totally go!” Kon says instantly. “Tiffany is…I know Tiffany. You can trust her."

Lois frowns. "Are you saying that because it's true, or because she's cute?"

"It's not like that, I swear. When and where?”

After an hour of convincing, Kon learns that ‘Tiffany’s’ ‘cousin’, however Robin swung that—maybe he roped in Nightwing again—wants to meet that Friday in one of the older Metro business districts, a rundown strip between the theater square and what used to be the finance district before they moved the subway line a mile over.

Kon walks past a couple shuttered lunch restaurants, a print shop that definitely is a front for something, a ballet studio over a RadioShack, before pausing in front of an antiques and collectibles store.

It all looks…well, he wouldn't call it completely safe, but it doesn't look like the kind of place for a supervillain ambush either. Lois agreed after she cased the street the day before, but Kon is still under orders to call her by sunset to assure her he's safe or else she’ll make Clark call the Justice League.

It's a little embarrassing being worried about all the time like he’s some stray Pomeranian. He's Superboy, after all, he can take care of himself. Still…he doesn't entirely hate it.

Luthor never cared if he was safe—after all, he could always launch another one. All his surveillance was just to make sure Kon didn’t run.

The building he's heading for is just around the corner, and despite how few people there are in the street he can already hear whispering behind him. Whoever's waiting for him, they probably won't want a crowd, or a tipoff to the press. So he'll just have to give everyone another reason for Superboy to be in this end of town.

The bell jingles as he opens the door, and a woman in a quilted apron looks up from a doily-covered workbench in the back of the room, where she’s polishing the face of an antique clock.

Oh god, Kon thinks in sudden panic as she looks him over, if I have to pretend I like clocks and Civil War coins nobody's ever going to think Superboy is cool again and my brand will be screwed, but then she rolls her eyes and nods towards a glass-fronted cabinet. "Beanie Babies and Pogs are over there. Don't touch the music boxes."

Kon supposes he ought to feel annoyed at the scorn. What if he was interested in kitschy music boxes covered in dorky little angels, huh? How about that? But complete indifference to Superboy's presence is such a refreshing reaction, especially after the chaos during Luthor’s trial, that he feels a sudden flood of affection when he hears her mutter about kids these days not having fashion sense. 

This from someone one lightning strike away from an AquaNet themed superpower, he thinks with a smile as he opens the cabinet. Huh, maybe I should sell out for Pogs, Flash sure has a lot…

Ten minutes later, Kon spends his last twenty dollars on a Beanie Baby (“That is heinously overpriced. It’s not even a rare one.” “I’m not the one who made the world go crazy over those things, kid, do you want it or not?”). Once he steps out on the street, he gives everyone a chance to register that he’s there finishing up his completely normal shopping, nothing to see here random citizens, then swirls away with super-speed, looping back through an alley and onto the stairs of the brick building around the corner.

It’s a totally normal three-story building: sad but trying its best convenience store on the ground floor, offices fronting studio apartments on the other two. Kon walks all the way up and pushes the office door open.

“I’m just letting you know up front if this is a trap you will not enjoy what comes next…”

There are four pieces of furniture in the office—table, desk, one chair each—and all of it has seen better days. Leaning on the shaky table is a slim red-haired man wearing a dark suit and blocky sunglasses.

He’s completely unfamiliar.

Then he reaches up and flicks the sunglasses with a smile, and he isn’t.

“Superboy, I presume?” 

Robin holds out a hand as he stands and Kon takes it automatically. There must be lifts in the shoes: he has about half an inch on Kon today. Looking up at him is new.

“Yeah…you’re Tiff’s cousin?”

Robin nods. “I’m trying to lay more of a paper trail on this one, that’s why it took me a couple weeks.” He gestures around the office grandly but there's a nervous hitch in his breathing. “Behold! My idea.”

Kon raises his eyebrows. Robin picks up a file off the desk and holds it open. “Certificate of Incorporation…Galactic Talent…filed on behalf of Kon of the House of El…huh?”

“All the Superboy branding reverted to you after Luthor’s arrest, since the court decided you were too young to sign contracts and he couldn’t count as your guardian. So, if you’re interested and Lois and Superman are okay with it…you can start right back up where you left off. Just, uh, slightly less fancy. Sorry.”

Kon swirls through the office, then opens the dividing door to the studio. “Oh my god, call the seventies, they must have a missing persons alert out for this wallpaper.” Maybe not the most grateful reaction, but if he said anything he was actually feeling right now he might do something incredibly uncool like start crying and he can’t let Robin see that. He drops onto the plain twin bed and tries to catch his breath.

“I can help repaint it later…I’ll fix it up, I swear, I’m just on a budget because I’m not using Bat-money for this.” Robin is speaking in a rush as he leans through the studio door. “I’ve done enough research on your old agency that I’m sure I can help you get started and then, I don’t know, maybe we could even hire back Angela, she seems to check out…”

“Oh man, Angela, I haven’t heard from her since the trial…” Kon stares up at the smudged plaster ceiling. 

Angela was always nice—she looked out for him as well as she could, and though she couldn’t have understood exactly how much it meant to him, she never treated him any differently than she would have any other human talent. She just didn’t realize what was really going on, and she only saw him when he was booked for events, so the most she could do was bother him to eat lunch, occasionally hint that she did not entirely buy that Kryptonians didn’t go to school past twelve, and insist on him not working on sets longer than the legal limit. 

She had no idea Luthor was keeping him in his own private SimCity, or that the agency she worked for was double-booking to hide that it was considerably less independent than it pretended to be. And when she found out, she was more than happy to appear as a witness for the prosecution: Lois wouldn’t let him go to the courthouse, but she let him meet with her for a few minutes when Angela came for an interview at the Planet office.

Kon feels a little bad for getting distracted. Maybe he should send her a thank-you card or something. He floats off the bed and flips to sit in the air in front of Robin.  “That would be, uh, great, Rob…what do I call you, anyway? Not like your real name,” he adds quickly, because this isn’t the time. “I mean for this. You know.”

“Oh, right, should have explained that…” Robin fishes in his pockets and comes out with a business card. “There it is.”

“Terry Winter…nope, means nothing.”

“That’s the point.” Robin leans against the doorframe and shrugs. “It’s an identity I’ve had on the back burner for a while, so he has enough history that even if anyone starts looking he’ll check out. And he’s old enough to file paperwork, and he has a pretty okay credit score. Not good enough to look suspicious but good enough we won’t have any trouble with financing.”

Kon flips the card over and hears Robin’s heart speed up. “‘Mister Sarcastic’?”

Robin snatches the card back. "Cripes, I forgot those were double-sided. So, long story, you wouldn’t be interested, this one time I had to infiltrate a stand-up comedy club—not important—I'll make new ones—"

Kon curls up in the air with his chin in his hands. "Oh no this is suddenly the most important thing in the world, please tell me there's video."

"No!"

"You're lying..." Kon floats accusingly around him until Robin flees back into the office.

"There's no video." He mutters something under his breath that sounds awfully like ‘and if there is I’ll have to kill Nightwing.’

“Sure, have it your way. One question?”

“Yeah.” Robin picks up a briefcase from one of the chairs. “There’s just a few things you need to sign if you want to do this, I understand after everything that’s happened if you’re concerned about—”

“You’re not actually a redhead, are you?”

Robin blinks behind the sunglasses. “Is that a…problem…?”

Kon tries not to think of photos of young Lex Luthor. “...No?” he says weakly.

“Well, I’m sorry to say…” He takes in the shocked horror on Kon’s face for a few seconds. “...I’m not. Strict Bat-dresscode.”

“Oh thank freakin’ heck.” Once he can breathe again, Kon reaches for the pen Robin holds out, then snatches his hand back. “Shit, almost forgot.” He fishes for the inner pocket of his jacket and comes out with his purchase at the antique store. “Got you this.”

Robin’s face fades into a weird kind of blank expression. Kon holds the Beanie Baby out hopefully by its little wings and wiggles it. 

Kon starts to worry he’s messed up something big as Robin doesn’t say anything for a long time (long for someone with superspeed, anyway).  Maybe there was some other relationship stage between making out and giving each other stuffed animals that he missed?

“They didn’t have a robin, I looked…”

“No, I, uh.” Robin coughs. “That’s. That’s great.” He takes the Beanie Baby and looks at the tag. “Rocket the Blue Jay will live in a place of honor in this establishment.”

Chapter Text

"Why do you keep coming back here?" Luthor's voice is tinny through the embedded speaker of the maximum-security visiting room glass. "I have far better things to do with my time than counseling teenage…Kryptonians with 'father issues'."

The mocking, indulgent way he says the lie makes Kon wince.

Why do you keep coming back here, you freakin' moron? Kon echoes to himself. 

He knows it's a terrible idea to talk to Luthor. Nothing could be worse than meeting, alone, with someone who knows how to push all his buttons—hell, Luthor made the buttons, maybe even slipped some in Kon doesn't know about—and give him a free hour to try to manipulate him.

Every time he leaves, he feels like he needs an industrial strength shower to get rid of the way Luthor's voice crawls under his skin. 

Every time, he promises himself he isn't going back.

Every time—before he shows up for morning visiting hours the next week.

The trouble is that…when all is said and done, Luthor knows. He knows about everything, including the things Kon still isn’t ready to talk about with Lois or Clark or Robin: the development process, everything else that happened in the secret lab levels, every time Luthor made him spy on his business rivals or steal confidential information.

So despite knowing how terrible of an idea it is, he can never quite resist the urge to be around someone he doesn’t have to cover up anything for. And even though Luthor always complains about Kon wasting his time, it's equally clear he enjoys having him there—it’s the first time Luthor has ever given any sign he cares, even if it’s just because he’s trying to push Kon over the edge.

No matter how much he knows he’ll regret it one day, no matter how much he dreads looking Luthor in the eyes every time he walks through the doors, Kon can’t stop himself going back.

Luthor leans back in the chair and Kon resists the urge to hide from his stare. It’s not like he can actually do anything from behind the glass. There’s nothing to be scared of.

"One of these days, 'Kon-El', people are going to figure out there's more of me in you than there is him."

"Shut up," Kon snaps, or tries to. It comes out sounding weak, placating—

(Like every time I tried to convince him I was worth another chance—)

"Nobody's going to connect me to you," he insists. "Everyone thinks—"

“Please, surely even you aren’t naive enough to think anyone actually believes that story? The government is only humoring their resident alien god until he finds something else to toy with and they can get to you without a fuss.”

Kon blinks, and Luthor laughs sharply.

"Oh my god, you did, didn’t you, you poor thing." The smile turns sympathetic, or would if the eyes above weren't so coldly piercing. "You’re not real to him—you’re just like all his human accessories he uses to blend in. You're just optics. A new foster puppy. He'll do the photo ops, get the good press, then he'll lose interest. It's just a matter of time."

"Superman's not like that, he—he's not like you—"

"And be realistic, you don't think he'd want you forever, do you? Nobody does. Not even that pint-size flying rat in Gotham. Hasn't been around so much lately, has he. Did he finish his little spy mission for the Bat? Or did he just finally figure out there's nothing behind the face that launched a thousand tabloids?"

Kon sees red.

When the searing split-second fades, he's pressed against the supposedly super-resistant glass, his fist in the center of a net of tiny cracks.

Luthor smiles sharp and cold through the shattered spiderweb as Kon stares, panting. “You’d like to kill me, wouldn’t you? It's exactly what I would do. So much more efficient than just leaving me here…you know I’m never actually going to serve this full sentence."

"Stop it! I wouldn't—"

But he's thought about it. Never doing it himself, just…he used to drift in the penthouse pool and daydream about the flood of relief if he walked into Luthor's office and found he'd conveniently dropped dead of a stroke.

"It would be easy if you tried. You’re far more capable than you think, and it’s so obvious you want to. But...you can’t, can you? If you do, all your new friends will drop you as fast as they picked you up. Because they only care as long as you’re useful to them. As long as you're a good little clone—"

"Shut up!"

Luthor takes a step towards the glass and Kon jolts back. Luthor's smirk only widens. "You’re stuck. You’re nowhere. And one day you'll need me.”

Kon stumbles back another step, gasping for breath. "No…I…" Looking around for a way out, he snatches up his backpack and tries to sound triumphantly dismissive, as if he isn’t clutching the bag like a lifeline. "I don't need you, actually. At all. And I have to go now, because you might have time to waste, but unlike everyone else in this room I have an actual job."

He can still hear Luthor laughing as he flies out of the building.

"Kon, are you okay? You're kinda spacing out…uh…I mean…" Tana makes a doubtful face, concern battling with trying to figure out if that was a politically incorrect thing to say to (as far as she knows) an extraterrestrial teenage refugee. "Are you, like, good?"

I'll take ‘accidentally way more insightful questions than I'm comfortable with’ for $800, Alex. "Yeah, Tana, I'm…fine. Just dealing with some stuff." 

Right after leaving the prison, he got a terse pager message from Robin saying not to expect him that weekend. Which makes five weeks in a row now: the last time he actually saw him for more than a few minutes was Christmas, since Robin promised to sneak in and watch the ball drop on New Year's but never showed. Of course he can't explain all the Bat Stuff that keeps interfering, but more than one sentence would be nice. 

He's not 'losing interest', Kon tells himself. He wouldn't. But it wouldn't kill him to pick up a Bat-phone, either. Well, it’s Gotham, so who knows…

"Welcome to earth, kid, we all—time's up."

Kon watches the ON AIR light click on and waits for Tana's intro. 

"Alright, it's Superboy and Tana back from commercials at the top of the hour, here to provide all the advice you'll ever need as long as you need it on a Monday or Thursday, call if you want us to answer live or write in any day of the week at GBS Radio…"

As Tana recites the address, Kon shuffles through the box of postcards and picks one to slide across the table.

"And just to be clear this is not the superhero emergency hotline, so if something is on fire call 911 and not us, thank you very much." 

Obviously, if it's a real all-hands disaster, or if the other Supers are out of town, Kon has an agreement that he can bounce as long as he tries very hard not to break the studio on the way out (they've only had to deduct replacement mics from his paycheck twice).

"So let's get right into it with…Mortified in Missouri, thanks for writing—"

"Okay, first," Kon cuts in, "I think your main problem here is being in Missouri."

“Wow, fighting words right from the gate.”

"I came, I saw, I beat Flash at Mario Kart, and I left because there's really nothing else to do in Missouri. The curvy thing is okay, I guess."

Somehow, practically everyone seems to think it is totally awesome to have a supposedly real genuine alien make fun of their hometown. There are whole Usenet servers dedicated to tracking which places he mentions. He doesn’t entirely get it. Luthor sure never liked being sassed. But it’s undeniably fun—especially Clark's bewildered reactions every time he listens, because of course Superman's unstoppable Midwest politeness-infused mind starts making strangled dialup noises at the mere idea of insulting the public, even as a joke.

If people enjoy it enough to keep listening, he’ll cut loose and give them what they want. He likes getting into the space-setting extraterrestrial persona, anyway. Sometimes he even feels like it’s true.

“You mean the…Gateway Arch?” Tana raises her eyebrows across the table.

“Eh, I’ve seen…archier.”

Also if he takes it far enough sometimes he can make Tana laugh and she’s really cute when she laughs. Like now, her nose scrunching up and her hair pooling on the table as she bends down, trying not to wheeze into the mic until she's composed enough to move on. “Okay, okay, so the actual question…"

The rest of the show goes okay—not quite his best broadcasting work, but he’s having trouble shaking Luthor out of his head today, even when some kid named Bart calls in theoretically to ask how to convince his teacher that homework is against the Geneva Convention, but actually to protest for the honor of Missouri and the Flash’s skill at Mario Kart.

He makes it through, but by the end of the show he can tell from Tana’s face that she’s noticed he isn’t in his usual groove. Kon thought he hadn’t been slipping that much the last few weeks, but maybe it’s more obvious than he thought.

He was really counting on Robin to help distract him from Luthor.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks during the last commercial break, and “Talk about what,” which usually works, only makes her look more suspicious.

He tries to get out of Dodge the second the ON AIR sign clicks off for the last time, but he promised not to superspeed in the studio outside of emergencies and Tana is on the side closer to the door. She doesn’t actually block it, though—not that a human standing in front of one soundproofed door actually could do anything to stop him, if he really wanted to get out. But ever since the first day they started working together they’ve had an unspoken agreement that she’s never going to corner him anywhere, and she’s also never going to say anything about why she’s doing that.

Still, the insistent way she stands right across the hall gets her point across well enough.

He could swoop past her and blow the issue off until Thursday, at which point he will blow the issue off until Monday, and so on. That’s worked the last three weeks. But the problem is she’s starting to look seriously concerned—Cool Aunt level concerned, and she usually doesn’t involve herself in his life that much, so for her it’s an even bigger deal. 

If he doesn’t surrender now, she might decide it’s time to call in Lois. And he knows Lois has his best interests in mind, but this isn’t a Lois problem.

It might, actually, be a Tana problem. 

Tana’s fun and smart, and never jumps in to take care of things the way Lois and Clark tend to. She’s an adult, but she’s not…old. She gets things, and he can be comfortable around her, even if she’s not Super. He can at least talk to her without worrying she’s going to grab the controls for his life out of his hands.

Lois could, technically, shut his business down if she thought she had to. He doesn’t think she would, not unless there was some kind of emergency. But it makes it hard to admit his problems to her like he used to, and after living with her for weeks during the trial she’s too good at guessing when something is wrong.

So in terms of strategy it’s definitely a better move to talk to Tana before she freaks out and calls Lois. 

Tana’s eyebrows go up as he stops in the air and slowly settles to the carpet. “Been a while,” she says.

Kon shrugs. “It would be rude not to walk you out.”

Once they’re in the elevator, he leans against the outer window and kicks at the tile for a few floors, trying not to think about how small the space is or the walls closing him in. He usually doesn’t go near elevators, but he can’t make Tana take twenty flights of stairs. “So, Tana,” he says finally, hoping he sounds casual, “actually, now that you mention it, I was wondering if I could talk to you about something…”

Tana smiles and turns away from staring at the bank of buttons, which definitely can’t have been that interesting, but he appreciates her giving him the space. “Any time, kid, we’ll get coff—”

Kon tries to keep his reaction from showing because of course, Tana is a human adult who likes human adult flavors even if they taste like bad decisions had a baby with a nightclub carpet, so he shouldn’t try to make her accommodate his undeveloped Kryptonian clone sweet tooth—

“...by which I mean milkshakes, gosh, how could I mispronounce something that badly. You, me, McDonalds. Let’s go.”

Twenty minutes (and several autographs signed in the line) later, Kon is sitting in front of a Happy Meal and a chocolate milkshake, swirling his straw through the half-melted dessert as he tries to think of everything he wants to put into words. 

It all sounds so petty when he gets around to actually complaining about it, compared to what things were like even a year ago.

Objectively, his life is pretty great. He owns his own business in a roundabout way, he isn’t in immediate danger of being scrapped for material, he's been a guest on the Muppets, he even has what could be called a boyfriend. Maybe. 

They haven’t really talked about what word to put on it. And even if Kon decided to come out—not that the heroes care, but civilians aren't always as accepting—it's not like they could go public with it.

That’s one of the main problems. Or, several problems in one problem.

First problem: Robin can’t be seen publicly in Metropolis with Kon, since Batman doesn’t want Superman-level criminals gunning for his junior partner. This makes complete sense, even if it does cause all the other cascading problems that are the shambles of Kon’s love life.

Second problem: Superboy can't be seen in Gotham openly for the exact same reason, and because in general Batman doesn't want the powered capes in his stomping grounds.

Third problem: Kon can’t be seen too often with 'Terry Winter', because Terry is supposedly twenty-four and thus if there was the slightest whiff of anything beyond a completely professional business relationship Tana and Lois would try their best to put Terry at the bottom of Metro Harbor and honestly, Kon isn’t sure if he’d bet on Robin in that matchup.

Fourth problem: Kon absolutely can’t be seen with Robin’s secret identity, even if he offered to reveal it, no matter how tempting it is, because it would just make things even more dangerous.

Sometimes he has panicked dreams of Luthor standing in front of a glass cage, but chained inside isn’t Robin, it’s a terrified dark-haired boy in civilian clothes. The clothes are different every time: sweats, private school uniform, designer suit, polo shirt...but the top half of his face is always blurry as he insists he's not Robin, it's all a mistake, he doesn't have anything to do with this please let me go. And then, always, Luthor gets out a gun and— 

(the excursion’s over, Superboy.)

Robin would show him, if he asked, and that's why he can never ask.

Because all the problems come from Kon. Even if he has a real name and a passport now, he still can’t go anywhere without people knowing he’s different. 

It really is fun being a celebrity. It’s great getting attention, and he usually really enjoys giving autographs on the street. He doesn't want to hide forever, but…if only he could turn it off once in a while.

“I just…” He puts his chin in his hands and stares down at the tepid fries, then picks one up and crisps it with heat vision, nibbling at it morosely. “I just want to be real.”

Tana’s smile slips and her eyes go wide, and Kon finds he suddenly can’t bring himself to look at the cautious gentle look on her face. “But…but you are real, sweetie.”

Would she say that if she knew you were half Luthor’s clone? Kon wonders for a moment, then kicks the thought aside. 

“I…I mean like…normal. Like a person. I don’t know, I just want to do normal stuff. I want to go to school and go on dates and invite someone to the school dance, you know, like on Saved By the Bell. I just want…I want to be human. Just—just to try it. Just once, even. Try being able to go out without everyone knowing what I am the whole time. And…and, you know, and stuff,” he finishes in a rush, and grabs for his milkshake so he doesn’t have to see the look on Tana’s face.

He knows he shouldn’t complain. And he doesn't, normally. It's fine.

But with the effort of working around everything, even though they’ve been…whatever they are…for months, Kon still feels like he barely ever sees Robin. It feels like he’s always stuck waiting for him to pop up, instead of just being able to give him a call and invite him to a movie or a yacht party or something, like normal highschool couples do if 90210 is anything to go by. 

And it is kind of weird knowing that Robin paid for everything he needed to get the business started. For one thing, how did he even do it? It must have been a huge amount of money for someone only… 

Kon discovers another problem, as he realizes he’s known Robin nearly a year and doesn’t even know how old he is. Somehow whenever they meet they never talk about themselves, and on the one hand it’s nice understanding someone so easily he can be comfortable without talking, but on the other, he’s pretty sure normal couples know what the other person’s favorite color is or if they’re allergic to anything.

Still, Kon already paid back the cost of the corporate filings and the purchase of the office out of his first two checks from GBS, and ‘Terry’ signed over the business side of things to Angela once she came back, with Lois as a corporate advisor. Robin doesn't actually have any controlling stake, and only pulls an occasional commission as Terry in order to have an excuse to be in the building.

So it’s not like it was before. It’s not like Luthor, and Kon appreciates all the effort Robin’s gone to making sure it doesn’t even look like it.

But the awareness is still sort of…there.

And then there’s everything else…of course he enjoys being recognized as an ally by the other heroes. He loves that Clark and Lois make time for him and try to make him feel included. He loves going riding with Kara. He even loves Angela dropping off cookies and, illogically, nagging him to eat some vegetables when she comes in twice a week to answer the agency voicemail and write up his schedule.

So he’s not exactly suffering here. He should be thankful for what he has, and he really is.

He just needs…something. He’s not sure.

Across the table, Kon explains everything, or at least everything that he can without running into Bat Stuff or secret identities. 

And maybe he doesn’t mention that he’s been visiting Luthor, because there is no way she would let that slide without calling Lois, and he really doesn’t want to have that talk with Lois right now.

Once he’s done spilling everything, Tana leans back thoughtfully on the pastel plastic bench and chews on the straw in her strawberry shake.

Kon breaks his chocolate chip cookie into pieces and waits for her to tell him to be grateful for what he has and stop being a dramatic child.

"So, like, I don't know. I just want…a break…?"

If he had tried whining like this to Luthor he wouldn't have lasted out a week. Obviously Tana would never even think of doing something like that, not that she could, but she's never unwilling to tell him when he's being annoying, either. And this definitely counts. 

He shouldn't have brought it up.

"So you're overwhelmed in your personal life because you're running your business and working as a superhero at the same time, and you know everyone you pass on the street can tell you’re different."

"Yeah, but I'm handling it, you know?"

"And you can't relax since everyone in Metropolis knows who and what you are."

"Still, it's not like they hate me, so…" Kon tries not to wonder how many would change their minds if they knew the whole story. And if it would be worse to come out as bisexual or as a supervillain's clone.

Obviously Tana wouldn't care—he's pretty sure she even knows who he's talking about, even though she's generously pretending not to, but…

(In development, of course he had no idea that humans usually had some kind of preference, or that they were expected to prefer the 'correct' option. All he knew was that when the lab techs had the TV playing he looked at Zack just as much as he did at Kelly, and the one time shortly after launch he made a pass at a boy it was made extremely clear that he would not last past a repeat incident. So.)

He does not intend to find out either way any time soon.

Tana keeps going, and Kon decides she might actually be too smart to talk to about this. But it's too late to escape now without breaking an entire McDonald's, and if he did that they might not let him special order chicken nuggets in bulk any more. 

"And you're frustrated because your relationship with…this person…has to be on their terms, not yours. You can't surprise them, but they can surprise you. You can't decide the schedule and they don't have to explain why they aren't visiting. You can't ask too many questions, but they know basically everything since Luthor's trial was all over the news."

You don't know the half of it. "Sure, but it's safer…"

"And on top of," Tana makes a broad circle with her free hand, "all that, you're third-wheeling Lois and Superman which sounds adorable but absolutely exhausting."

"Yeah, but…hey, I didn't tell you that!"

"I have eyes. And the cameras tend to sit on you three when you go to a football game."

"Was that the one when they—"

"The matching hats, yes. And then there was the fair where they did the Lady and the Tramp routine on a pretzel."

Kon winces. He was trying not to remember that one. "You see what I'm dealing with here."

Kana sighs gravely. "God, yes, I have chaperoned an older sibling or two in my time. Love them to death but also, spare me.” She makes an exaggerated gagging face and Kon smiles weakly. “Anyway. What did that poor cookie do to you? Here, take mine."

Kon takes a bite of the cookie and Tana chooses this moment to drop her bombshell. 

"So…it sounds to me like what you want is your own secret identity."

"Wha—" Once he finishes coughing, Kon raises his head and stares at her, pushing his sunglasses up. 

She shrugs. “I call it like I see it.” 

Kon opens his mouth to say no, absolutely not, where did you get that idea, then… "Oh actually I guess you're right?"

"No shit, we run an advice show. You think I got that slot because of my looks?"

"Um…mainly I thought you got it because you went to school with Lois…"

Tana grumbles under her breath and rests her chin on her hand. "God, I always forget she has you on the weekends. Anyway, I didn't go to school with Lois, it was a journalism mentoring program. I'm not old.

"Lois isn't old?" Kon protests.

"You're precious. Tell her to get me a better Christmas present next year."

"Will do."

"Your Hannukah thing was cute though."

"Thanks."

"Back on topic. Can't you explain this to, like, Superman? I'm sure your friends would help if they realized you were struggling—"

"Yeah, but it's kinda." He shrugs shamefully and pushes his tiny plastic Furby around in front of the french fries. "They are, uh. One of the things I wanted a break from. That's…weird, right? After everything they've done for me? I don't…not like them but if I tell them I have a problem they always want to just—handle it. Like, 'here, Superboy, we’re putting you in a hamster ball so go play while we fix all of this and clean up your enclosure'. And, and I’m glad they help, and I know they don't mean to put me in a cage. It’s better than anything else I’ve ever had, but…I wish I could take care of one of my problems on my own. Just so I can prove…just so I know I can. Because—" it can’t last forever “who knows when I’ll need to, what if Superman takes a wrong turn at Alpha Centauri or something, you never know.” He sighs and takes a last bite of the cookie. “And I don’t want to always have to…tell them everything. That’s…that’s not bad, right? Thinking that? Kind of getting used to the whole family thing again over here.”

“No way!” Tana exclaims. "It's not weird to want to have a life! You don't have to let the world know everything. Maybe parents on Krypton were different, but I don't even tell my mom everything. Of course she usually worms it out of my sister anyway, way to be a pushover sis, really appreciate it, but the point stands. And you’re definitely at the age for it. I’d be more concerned if you didn’t want some freedom, really."

Kon blinks. “Oh.”

“I'm sure they're just worried about you, but they've probably forgotten they're dealing with a teenager. I’m glad you trusted me enough to talk about this. Do you want another cookie?”

“No, I’m okay—”

Tana tilts her chair back onto two legs. “Do you want a secret identity?"

“I thought we established…”

“Well, okay then." Tana drops the chair back down and looks Kon in the eyes. "Let’s do it.” 

"What?"

"I promise I won’t do everything for you...so if you’re in, let's get you a secret identity. No Super-help or Super-babysitting needed.”

“You…you’d help with that?”

Tana sweeps her hair back behind her shoulders and poses dramatically on the chair. (It would be more dramatic if she wasn't still holding the milkshake.) “Please, I've seen Charlie's Angels. I've seen Mission Impossible. I've seen Scarecrow and Mrs. King. You are basically fulfilling baby Tana's life dream here."

"You wanted to be a secret agent?"

Tana laughs. "No, I want to be the one on the other end of the radio who yells at them for going over budget. Now let's get planning."

Chapter Text

“Okay, all set, let’s…oooooh boy.”

“Um, are you okay?” Kon asks as Tana looks in her makeup mirror, winces in a seasick kind of way and rests her forehead on the steering wheel.

“Fine, just give me a minute…I look like my mother, oh god…”

“You’re supposed to be a mother,” Kon points out. “Or, stepmother, whatever.” How else is he going to get enrolled in Gotham City High School? It’s wild how much a dated wig, plain makeup and an old dress changes Tana’s look—nobody would recognize her from her GBS commentary segments like this. And if she can do this, you can, Kon tells himself. But only if she stops freaking out long enough to sign some forms. “And I think you look fine? Like, Cher fine more than Mariah Carey fine, but—”

“Appreciate it but I'm going to stop your attempt to make me feel better right there." Tana opens an eye to take another cautious look and groans. "I just—didn’t think I’d look so much like my mother. God, I feel like I’m about to start lecturing myself about how I should have stayed in med school.”

“Tanaaaaa, I’m going to be late on my first day—”

Tana takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Okay, okay, crisis over, let’s go.” She unbuckles her seatbelt and reaches for the door, then turns back and reaches over to squeeze Kon’s shoulder. “Look, you said you want to handle things for yourself, so after today I’m going to let you handle it. I’ll cover everything I can on my end with GBS and Angela and Lois, but if you want to prove this to yourself I can’t hover over you in Gotham.”

“I know,” Kon sighs. They already went over this so many times—Tana’s going to be in Europe, holding up the cover story they set up of him going on a ‘working vacation’ for a GBS special segment. Of course she can’t help in Gotham, not without super-speed.

“But—I’m giving you your space, like you want, but I’m not abandoning you. Okay? If…if you think someone’s about to figure you out, or something happens at school, or, you know, just anything, even if the other kids don’t like you…if you want to call the whole thing off you know where to get in touch with me. Not that I don’t think you’ll be fine.” She reaches over and tugs at the collar of his shirt until it lies flat, then gives him a quick thumbs-up. “There we go. That sweater is adorable.”

Kon smiles weakly, focusing very hard on twisting and untwisting the strap of his backpack. He hadn’t even thought about what the other students might think. He’s never interacted with non-celebrity people his own age outside of events: the only ones he ever meets on casual terms are Robin and Green Arrow and some of the other younger heroes. They seem to like him okay, but they’re also not statistically relevant. Or maybe they are. It’s not like he has anything to compare them to.

Ever since Tana kicked off this plan—calling the school, dragging him around from the mall to thrift stores to suburban yard sales, packing all his new Normal Human Stuff into her Subaru hatchback—Kon has been spending all his time picturing his perfect Saved By the Bell high school life. He’s been so busy preparing that…he completely forgot it would involve other people.

He might have rushed into this just a little. 

But he just needs something besides Metropolis, and Luthor, and the constant wondering if Robin is going to remember he exists this week or not.

Tana pats his shoulder. “It might not be exactly what you want. It happens to everybody at a new school, I moved three times before I turned twelve, trust me. Just…try to go with the flow and enjoy it, and you’ll be great.”

“Sure,” Kon says, hoping his voice isn’t shaking the way he feels like it is because he’s Superboy, he isn’t even afraid of evil robots and killer alien warlords, how could he let a few teenagers scare him? So totally lame.

“If you need it, just say the words,” Tana continues. “I’ll come back on the next plane and say my husband lost his job and we’re leaving to move in with his folks in Virginia. Or…maybe I’ll just kill the husband. I don’t know. Workshopping it. Let’s get you enrolled.” She reaches up to ruffle his hair, then swings her door open.

“Hey, it took forever to straighten that…” Kon protests as he follows her across the sidewalk.

Half an hour later, where there was once Superboy, also known as Kon-El, third most popular Kryptonian in Metropolis (one day, Kara, just wait till the next Daily Planet poll, I’m coming for you and your flying horse), there is now Kelly Clark, Gotham's newest absolutely normal completely human totally verifiably high school aged resident.

Gotham wasn't, strictly speaking, the point of the plan. 

Tana was already midway through working up a scenario for Hawaii—”Maybe if we say you’re my cousin’s lovechild from the mainland people will buy it?”—when one of her old friends from med school emailed asking if she knew anyone who'd be willing to house sit a property she just inherited in Gotham. Tana was the only person she knew on the East coast, and she was desperate enough to offer a free stay to anyone willing to fix the paint a little and cover peeling wallpaper and in general keep an eye on the place so it doesn't get firebombed before she can line up a buyer.

And who better for unpaid home security than Superboy?

It was too perfect to pass up. After all, if he can pass as human in Robin's city…

(Maybe he'll be willing to make time for me again—)

…He can pass anywhere.

Nobody’s called them on it yet—his biggest fear was that they’d be discovered the moment they walked through the door and the school secretary would start asking where the camera crew was and what prank show they were filming for. He’d have to leave Metropolis and live in shame in the Fortress of Solitude until Y2K wiped everyone's memories if that happened. So far, though, it all seems to be working. 

He isn’t sure whether to be more surprised about Tana’s disguise working or his own. They both seem pretty flimsy, despite everything Clark always says about expectations being more important than visuals.

The biggest change was straightening his hair: even Kon was startled to look in the mirror after they finally managed it. It turns out Kryptonian hair does not cooperate with being heat-styled, resulting in four broken flatirons, two circuit breaker overloads in Tana’s house, and eventually the discovery of one brand of ceramic iron that would hold heat-vision energy long enough to work. 

Now it falls around his face, softening the angles slightly and disguising Superboy’s trademark fade. He keeps startling himself when he turns his head quickly; the first time he jumped he broke Tana’s toaster.

Next, of course, is the clothes. For his first day, he’s wearing a plain polo shirt and khakis with a soft knit sweater, and on top of all of it an oversized red windbreaker. He doesn’t need the extra warmth, since while Kryptonians feel temperature differences, the internal heating system that comes with absorbing yellow-sun energy means there’s no discomfort from it. But it’s barely March, with snow still patching the grimy Gotham sidewalks, so he’ll need a coat if he wants to blend in. 

Unlike the sharp lines and snug fit of his usual suits, the human clothes disguise his size rather than accentuate it. He already wasn’t that tall, shorter than he really should be judging by Clark not that this annoys him or anything, and especially with the coat on his shoulder width and musculature are far less apparent.

The finishing touch is a pair of slim rectangular glasses with thin tan frames. The glasses aren’t to help with the disguise—Superboy wears glasses in all his photos already. Kon just feels more comfortable with them on, like he isn’t giving up on everything about himself. And like the second half of his fake ordinary-human-boy name, he enjoys the idea of feeling connected to Clark, even if he isn’t telling him about this little scheme just yet.

Once all the papers are signed and his cafeteria plan is paid up, Tana smiles at the secretary and steers Kon towards the door to the hall. “And you’re sure you’re okay,” she whispers, squeezing his shoulder again. “You can still call this off any time, my flight isn’t until tomorrow morning.”

For a moment, as he hears the students in the hall talking, the exclamations and laughter and conversation all blurring together and jarring his hearing until he thinks even Krypto’s dog whistle might be preferable, he wants nothing more than to take Tana up on it, bolt back to Metropolis, and pretend the whole thing never happened.

But if he isn’t here at GCHS, what would he be doing on a Monday morning? 

Visiting Luthor, most likely, and hoping this wouldn’t be the day he snapped. He can’t take any more of that, not right now.

“I’m fine, T…’Mom’,” he says, shrugging off her hand and picking up his bookbag. “See you.”

He opens the door to the hall, followed by Tana’s saccharine parody of a sitcom-mom voice. “Have a great first day, honey!”

Kon is having…a day, definitely. His first, even.

Great is probably not the way to describe it.

It starts when he’s trying to find his locker before homeroom. 

That should be simple enough, right? Apparently not.

The school is set into a slight slope, so the hallway is separated into a few different levels with short steps in between. Kon’s locker is just after the steps to the second level: as he’s going up, he bumps shoulders with a boy in a varsity jacket going down. Not even hard, since he knows how to navigate crowds at events, but when you’re not a celebrity people don’t get out of your way as fast. 

It’s his first time being not worth anyone’s notice: neither of them seem to realize he exists until the contact, and when they turn back to look at him they do not look happy. And when Kon doesn’t bother being intimidated by their glares as he puts away his coat, they look even less happy.

He doesn’t think anything of it—sure, they’re big, but who’d be dumb enough to get in Superboy’s face?—so by the time he remembers he looks pretty un-Super right now they have him hemmed in against the lockers.

“Nice sweater, dork.” the larger one sneers. “Your mom buy it or something?”

Kon looks down at the gray and blue cables, then back up. “I mean…yeah? Is that not normal…?”

“No, see, it’s like…that means…I’m trying to say…'' The jock blinks uncertainly, pauses, starts to say something else a couple times, then growls in frustration.

As he struggles to figure out how to explain the insult, Kon slips under his arm and tries to step around them to head down the hall. “Look, I’d love to exchange fashion tips but I have to get to homeroom—”

The jock takes a step to the side to block his way. "What do you think this is, twerp, Saved By the Bell?"

And, like, what is he supposed to say to that? They clearly aren't expecting a yes. And it's beginning to occur to him that the scenario here is not, in fact, very Saved By the Bell, and expecting it to be might have been actually incredibly stupid. 

But he isn't going to back down, either. Oh wow, two football players insulting him. He's so scared. What are they, like two hundred pounds each? Please.

And if they want words to hurt, they should take lessons from Luthor.

"Philosophically, don't we all want to be Saved By the Bell?" is what he hears himself saying.

Someone laughs quietly into a locker somewhere behind him—not mean, but bright and startled, genuine.

The two jocks stare at each other blankly.

"Kid's kinda got a point, Xander…" the smaller one mutters, brow furrowing thoughtfully.

Wow, keep it up, another few months and one of your neurons might actually activate.

Xander snarls in frustration. “Think you’re so smart—” 

Kon sees the shove coming a mile before it connects.

He doesn’t want to let it happen—he’s pretty sure this will solidly peg him as a loser on his first day. But if he doesn’t sell the hit, if he doesn’t go down…with the angle he's coming from Xander could easily break his hand. His wrist, even, if he hits hard enough. And he’s a Grade-A Genuine douchebag, no mistake, but he’s also just a kid, a human civilian kid who has no idea he’s standing in front of a solar-powered immovable object wrapped in a secondhand sweater. 

What if the injury makes him lose his spot on the team? What if his parents can’t afford physical therapy? What if he loses his shot for a college scholarship and his whole life is ruined, just because a runaway lab experiment on a whim wanted to be cool?

Geez, does Clark feel like this all the time?

Kon lets the shove strike his chest squarely and pivots backward with the hit, planning to slip down and land in a sitting position on the floor—embarrassing, but there aren’t that many people looking, so the damage to his reputation should be minimal. And it's not like it will hurt anything besides his dignity.

He remembers the steps behind him just too late to stop his foot from going down into empty air.

Kon kicks into flight a little: not enough to actually break the fall, since that would be way too obvious. Just enough that he won’t break the floor when he lands.

The floor, or the student who lets out a soft ‘oof’ as he goes down under Kon.

“Ohmygosh I’m so sorry,” Kon gasps as he rolls off, sitting on the floor in front of the lower row of lockers. The other boy seems to get up without injury, so Kon doesn’t have to reset the ‘days without accidental clone violence’ sign just yet.

“You okay?” the boy asks just as Kon is getting ready to ask the same thing.

“Sure, fine…”

"Sorry about Xander," the boy says, grabbing Kon's arm to help him to his feet. Kon makes sure he follows the slight pull, because if he isn't helping there is no way someone that size is going to be able to lift him. "I swear some of us are civilized, but if he doesn't get his bullying quota in each day he's gonna pass up his chance for the big internship. These yours?"

"Oh…yeah, thanks." Kon takes the glasses from the hand that appears in his range of vision, not looking up until they're settled on his face.

The boy he fell on top of is…well, kind of a garden variety human boy. Okay, a cute garden variety human boy. Fluffy dark hair gelled up just enough in front to keep it out of his face, blue eyes, a few freckles sprinkled across his cheekbones. He’s wearing an open purple button-down over a Gotham Knights tee, which in comparison to Kon’s outfit is probably way better for blending in with human teenagers.

"What do you mean, internship?" Kon glances over his shoulder to see Xander and his friend walking away laughing, then back to the other boy.

"He's going to try out for Clayface's gang when he graduates, so, you know, he figures if he's really lucky and gets all his highschool beatdowns on his resume maybe he'll make Second Junior Assistant Mud Puddle."

He says it so deadpan that it takes several seconds for it to sink in how ridiculous a sentence is now floating in the air between them. Kon blinks, wondering how to react.

The boy picks up the yellow jacket by his feet and stuffs it into the locker on top of a large insulated lunch box. Kon sees a large magazine ad for a Polaroid camera taped up on the inside of the door, above a clothespin string holding several photo prints. "Of course, if he makes First Junior Assistant Mud Puddle, that comes with dental, but he's being realistic."

Oh, okay, standard human teenager joke.

Kon laughs and the other boy smiles as he slams his locker closed. "By the way, I'm—" he starts, just as the bell starts to ring. "Cripes, gonna be late for homeroom. Catch you at lunch maybe? Cool bye—"

Something about Gotham seriously hacks Kon's powers. Maybe it's lead, maybe it's the ancient curse some of his call-in guests insist is totally real, maybe Batman has some kind of Bat-Super-repellant.

Whatever it is, Kon would like the ride to stop so he can get off.

It would be one thing if his abilities just stopped working altogether. Instead, he never knows when they're going to switch on into overdrive. Ever since stepping out if Tana's car, he's been wrestling to hold his vision and hearing in check, but he refused to let anything show in front of her. It’s too late to back out now, not when she’s done so much for him. He can’t waste all of her generosity, and he’ll definitely get used to it soon, right?

The second he steps through the door into homeroom—late, of course, so everyone stares—it all spins out of control.

Why did he pass up Hawaii again?

The teacher turns cold eyes on him. "Right, our new transfer student…I won't mark you tardy since it's your first day but—try harder tomorrow. Come and introduce yourself."

The best thing he can say about the experience is that the school is still standing at the end of it, since heat vision takes conscious focus to turn on, rather than his x-ray and hearing which take focus to keep down. 

He practiced introducing himself with his new human name a few times when Tana wasn't looking, but right now he can’t hear himself think well enough to talk, since every single conversation in the school is echoing in his head.

“...game last night? That penalty was some bullshit—”

“—says Amber says Tracy says she saw Xander with Tiffany instead of Clarissa, can you believe—”

“...pop quiz on the periodic table, you may turn over the papers on your desks…”

“...betting pool for how long it takes Two-Face to break out again, you in?”

“...please, as if you could make the cheer squad…”

“...Julius Caesar callbacks will be this afternoon, all cast members need permission slips signed by…”

“...call that shit a Godzilla movie? What happened to this country…”

“...if it’s hot dog casserole for lunch again I’m letting Killer Croc take me, swear to god…”

It’s so disorienting Kon loses control of his vision for a moment, the x-ray peeling through the walls of the next three classrooms until he feels like he’s looking into endless monochrome mirrors. His head starts spinning and he doesn’t remember actually saying anything, but he must have staggered through some kind of introduction, since the next thing he hears clearly after dragging his powers back under control is “Thank you, Kelly, you can take a seat.”

On the way to an empty desk by the wall he stumbles over the cord coming from the TV cart. Several of the students snicker, especially from the back where a few jocks and their girlfriends are sitting.

As first impressions go it definitely could have been better.

For the moment Kon is just glad he got through it without being sick. He spends a few minutes bracing his head in his hands, staring down at the desk until the scribbles on it— 

(SPUFFY 5EVER)

(HAWKS RULE CROCS DROOL)

(in britest day in darkest nite no bimbo shall escape my sight)

(SCREW YOU JARED)

—stop floating in triplicate.

When he looks up, he glances at the board just long enough to confirm he has no idea what is going on, then stares out the window at the gray Gotham sky.

Or that was the idea, anyway, but before reaching the window Kon's eyes land on the boy in the purple shirt from the lockers.

And Locker Boy is looking back.

When he spots Kon his eyebrows go up a little bit, blue eyes widening in a soft concerned expression that makes his dark lashes stand out. You okay? he mouths.

Kon wiggles a hand and shrugs.

Locker Boy winces sympathetically, then cuts off their silent conversation to start copying from the board in a color-coded planner.

Kon tries to look at the teacher as well, since he's already made himself look weird enough without just staring at some random kid all through class, but he's too attuned to motion and keeps glancing over to see what Locker Boy is doing.

Most of the students who aren't focused on the teacher are either passing notes back and forth with friends or rushing through homework assignments due later in the day. Kon currently has neither homework nor friends so he doesn't have anything else to do except look.

Locker Boy seems to have all his homework done already: after taking a quick glance through his trapper keeper he props it up on the desk in front of him, neatly shielding the surface from view of the teacher. Then, after waiting another few seconds for the teacher to turn around again, he leans down towards the backpack sitting between his feet.

Kon watches in growing horror as Locker Boy produces first a thermos, then two cans of White Lightning Jolt Cola and a bottle of black coffee. He dumps everything into the thermos before swirling it up and taking a large drink.

Locker Boy catches him looking and lowers the thermos. What? he mouths, taking in Kon's stunned expression. Then he grins playfully. Try some?

Kon feels sick just imagining what that might taste like, but Locker Boy doesn't even blink as he takes another sip, eyes locked on Kon's. 

Gotham is officially goddamn crazy.

The first class after homeroom is English Lit, which is solidly terrible. They're in the middle of a unit so Kon is completely lost, even if he knew anything about F. Scott Fitzgerald, which he doesn't. 

Kon isn't really a books guy. Or a words guy, in general. Maybe it has something to do with his universe being visual for so long during development, when he had nothing to do but watch what was going on around him or on the TV. 

He can read, sure, but it's not something he usually does for fun. For one thing, it doesn't really fit his brand portfolio. And whenever he tries anything more complicated than magazine articles, it all keeps trying to slip away from him while he's just trying to make the clauses sit still long enough to figure out what's going on.

Ask him to determine threat levels in a crowd, or construct a visual scenario at an event so that the narrative goal is perfectly caught in the camera, and he can do that, so why are books so hard?

The one bright spot, however, is that he finally finds out Locker Boy's name, when the teacher calls out names for the essay outline due that morning.

"Timothy W—"

"I'm still enrolled as Drake," Locker Boy (Timothy, apparently) interrupts as he gets up from his desk, printout in hand.

(Maybe Kon should have asked Tana how to write an essay while they were planning.)

"Of course. Timothy Drake, my mistake."

"Wow, so humble," one of the cheerleader types in the back of the room breathes in mock admiration as Timothy returns to his seat. 

"Cut it out, Clarissa," another one of the jocks says from the back corner, and she glares at him.

"Why are we taking his side all of a sudden? Just because he's—"

"Quiet please!" the teacher shouts.

The rest of English Lit goes by in a confused blur, but since they’re in discussion groups all Kon has to do is keep his mouth shut and hope they don’t notice that he lets someone else answer whenever the teacher asks for comments.

It's Math class where things start to really get weird.

Kon doesn't remember ever having to really use math, apart from basic budgeting or a few simple cognitive tests when he was first launched. So, if he thought about it enough to notice, it should have been a significant surprise that he wasn't immediately lost the way he was when he saw the teacher writing down DRIVING CONFLICTS OF THE GREAT GATSBY last period.

But he doesn't think about it, so it doesn't seem weird, at first.

The geometry diagrams on the board are even calming, in a way.

But even that doesn't feel weird yet, since Kon isn't currently thinking of Luthor's tendency to count down Fibonacci numbers when he's feeling particularly murderous at times it would be disadvantageous to actually kill anything.

He isn't thinking of that, because he's too busy watching Timothy chewing drowsily on a yellow pencil between gulps of the Jolt coffee monstrosity.

Must have been some party last night, that stuff smells like it would wake the dead.

Kon has never been so conscious of his heightened sense of smell before Gotham. The school itself at least is new enough that it doesn't smell like the Industrial Revolution had a bad hangover behind a pizza restaurant, but behind the high-impact sweetness of Timothy's thermos there's a vague sticky, oozy rotten smell drifting in from a couple blocks over. Judging by some of the student chatter it was left behind the last time Batman fought Clayface.

Maybe this is why Clark is always so enthusiastic about those 'Support Your Local Sanitation Technician' PSAs.

"...quick quiz to see how well you're all following before we keep going with this unit."

Still staring at Timothy, Kon takes the paper he's handed blindly, flips it over, and glances down just long enough to scribble some kind of guess so he isn't handing back a black page.

“Thank you, everyone, if you can pass it back…” The teacher flips quickly through the sheets, then makes a confused noise. “Kelly?”

Kon turns his attention away from Timothy. “Yes?”

“You didn’t fill out the sheet?”

“But…I did, I totally—”

“Oh, oh wait, this one was printed double-sided by mistake, you answered the college prep questions…huh, they’re both correct, good job, I’ll credit that anyway…”

It is at this point that Kon remembers the Fibonacci numbers.

It feels like he’s been hit by a truck.

“Sorry need the restroom,” he gasps, and bolts.

Chapter Text

This is a new low for sure, Kon thinks, leaning his head back against the side of the stall. I'm possibly the only person to ever have a breakdown over the prospect of a good grade in math.

Kon's subliminal clone education has never been more than a running joke he used with Robin and Lois. He never mentions it around Clark—he always starts looking really sad and helpless when he hears any of the worse aspects of the development process and Kon can't take Superman looking so crushed. Clark tries, he really does, but he’s had three decades feeling like all the world’s problems are on his shoulders. Kon doesn’t want to put more there. 

Robin and Lois understand better that he'd rather laugh about the horrible things, since there isn't anything even Superman can do to fix them now. 

Kon knew that some of it must have stuck, since he's always been able to speak fluent English (even if Luthor always scolded him over how much slang he used), but as for the rest…

('—there's more of me in you than there is him—')

Kon always teases Robin about how Galactic Talent doesn't need an accountant since he could do it all himself if he really wanted to, but Angela needs to get her paycheck from somewhere. Robin always shoots back that it's better if he doesn't see how Terry is cooking the books.

But no matter how many times they bounced the joke back and forth they never actually…checked.

Kon always shied away from anything actually involving what Lex claimed he was supposed to know. Math, chemistry, engineering…not Great American Literature, obviously, because reading wastes time that can be more efficiently used taking over the world. He always told himself it was just because it looked boring.

Maybe he was actually scared he would find out it wasn't. And then he found out, so now here he is sitting on a tiled bathroom floor that definitely could be cleaner, reading painted-over graffiti and trying not to have a second round of his panic attack.

This is decidedly not a Slater moment.

This is beneath even Screech, probably.

"Dammit, and they promised TV would rot my brain," he mutters to himself, pressing his hands over his eyes. "Not enough Baywatch…”

Something about the sudden cold shock of realizing…what, that there was one thing Luthor wasn't lying about? That if he tried he really could have been worthy of Luthor's acknowledgement? As if he would ever want that—as if anyone worthy of Luthor would ever deserve Robin's love—

Kon winces (someone worthy of Luthor would have let Robin fall) and takes deep breaths, trying not to be sick again.

Still, on the bright side, the shock of all that seems to have hit his powers the same way Lois hits her dryer with a wrench when it isn't behaving. His x-ray mostly turns off when he tries to push it down, nothing is spinning any more for the moment (he isn't quite ready to try standing up again) and his hearing is covering just the restroom he's in, not the whole high school.

The only other sound in the room besides Kon's own rough breathing is a steady heartbeat near the sinks. He holds onto it for a minute, using it to tether his own.

Once he thinks he can face human beings again he drags himself to his feet and leaves the stall to splash some water on his face.

"You okay?" asks the heartbeat. Or rather, the boy sitting on the counter surrounding the heartbeat.

Kon turns the faucet off and looks up, pulling his thoughts away from Luthor and Robin until he recognizes the blue eyes and the purple shirt.

"Timothy."

Timothy swings his sneakers one last time and jumps down from the counter. "There are some who call me…Tim," he declares dramatically as he takes a step closer.

Kon blinks blankly as he puts his glasses back on.

Tim sighs. "I swear that's funny if you know the reference. My name's Tim Drake," he says in a normal voice, holding out a hand. "Hi."

Kon dries his hand on his sweater and takes Tim's hand cautiously for a second, not wanting to risk triggering another out-of-control powers episode by squeezing. "Kelly Clark. I just moved here with my mom."

Tim's expression doesn't change from the friendly smile, either at the still-damp touch or the slightly limp handshake. "Nice to meet you, officially."

"Were you there the whole time?" Kon asks as Tim leads him out into the hall.

"Just a few minutes," Tim replies. "Mr. Grummett asked me to check on you. I think he figured you thought he was mad you solved his fancy problems. You don't have to worry about that, he's really nice. But I'm guessing that's not the issue…you need the nurse? I can show you the way."

That is the last thing I need right now, Kon thinks. "No, I, uh. I'm okay, just…allergic.”

“To…what, math?”

Kon laughs weakly and tries to think of something to change the subject. "No, to that freakin' toxic sludge you're drinking for breakfast, what did you think?"

Tim brightens as if Kon has just told him he's shortlisted for a Nobel Prize. "Yeah it's awful, the worst combination I've figured out yet. I thought Citrus Climax was promising but this is so much worse! Want some?" He reaches for the strap of his backpack.

Kon recoils halfway across the empty hall. "No! Oh my god, what is wrong with you?"

"Relax, I left it on my desk." Tim laughs and Kon finds, to his surprise, that his responding smile is a little less forced. "I do a lot of late night study sessions. And, you know, once my brother stole my drink so obviously the only rational response is waging psychological warfare for the rest of my life." He lets the deadpan statement hover again, then shrugs and smiles. "So. Back to the horrors of Intermediate Geometry?"

Kon wavers, but he doesn't see any other option if he wants to survive his first day with his secret identity intact. "Sure," he sighs.

"Just remember, it could be worse," Tim bumps Kon's arm sympathetically with his shoulder. "You could be in German class with Xander."

Kon survives the rest of math, somehow.

The teacher smiles apologetically when he returns (trying to hide behind Tim, which would work better if Tim wasn't easily three inches shorter) and doesn't call on him for the rest of the class.

For the remaining half hour, Kon applies himself to doodling Pokemon in his notebook and waiting for the bell to ring. Tim glances over a few times and Kon shrugs at his questioning looks.

He just…isn't sure what to do with someone being nice to him right now, not after discovering Luthor far closer to the surface than he ever thought.

Maybe trying to get so close to humans is a bad idea. But then…Luthor is his human side, after all.

Maybe learning more about how normal humans work will help him deal with it. Still, it's not like any of these Gotham kids asked to be used to fix Kon's problems, either.

Not even Tim. So Kon shouldn't presume.

Tim smiles across at him as the bell rings, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and Kon gives up.

As long as I'm careful, he tells himself. As long as I'm careful, what's wrong with having friends?

…Robin survived, right?

"Thought we could have lunch together," Tim says as he catches up with Kon in the hall. "Unless you have plans?"

"Wouldn't you know it, this is the one day I'm not booked up," Kon says, matching his deadpan. "So why not?"

"Great, let me just grab my lunch…"

The cafeteria is much louder than the math classroom, and Kon's hearing starts to overreact again as he takes a tray full of food, holding it very softly so as not to break it. Not that the food itself would be much loss.

Tim follows him through the line, holding his own lunchbox, then leads him towards a table in a back corner of the space, half hidden behind a pillar.

Kon thinks he's starting to get the hang of letting unimportant sounds fly past, instead of trying to catch everything and ending up in another overloaded spin cycle. He lets most of it drift into a blur of reverb and listens to scraps of conversation from other tables as they pass: who's dating who, what everyone did on the weekend, which homework assignments are just, like, the worst, oh my god.

A table full of jocks and their girlfriends laughs as Kon and Tim cross the room, and their sharper voices break through the volleys of chatter flying back and forth around the cafeteria.

“Man, what I wouldn’t give to trade in my dad for a cooler model. You think Timmy had something to do with the plane crash? I heard he was supposed to be on that flight.”

Tim doesn’t react. Maybe it’s too far away for a human to hear, but—Kon doesn’t think so.

“That’s…that’s kind of mean, Xander,” Clarissa says in a faint, shut-down voice.

Xander scoffs around a mouthful of fries. “Who cares, he can cry into new daddy’s bank account. All those zeroes have gotta be sooooo traumatizing.”

Tim does react this time, his shoulders tensing just slightly as his grip tightens around his lunchbox.

Kon wants to say something, but they've barely known each other for ten minutes and it's not as if he knows the whole story. Tim clearly doesn't want extra attention on his family—Kon can relate.

The next moment, as Kon is still hesitating, Tim smiles again and the chance ends.

Tim waves at the two other students already at the table. "Jen, Ives, hi, this is Kelly, it's his first day…"

They're both about the same age as Tim and Kon—Kon thinks vaguely that he might have seen Ives in Lit but he can't be sure.

Ives is dressed similarly to Kon, with a green sweater vest over a button down and jeans (Kon begins to doubt the accuracy of Tana's fashion sense as it applies to teenagers). Jen, in contrast, wears a wine-red crushed velvet minidress with a jagged edge, over fishnet gloves and ripped black jeans held together with safety pins. 

"Hi!" Ives says cheerfully, sliding his backpack off one of the seats to make more room. "Welcome to the nerd table."

Jen elbows him.

"The nerd and one goth table, my mistake."

"Hi," Jen says, staring at him through clumped mascara. "What brought you to this cursed city?"

"Hi," Kon says as he takes the other remaining chair. "Um, my mom's new job, mostly. It's not really cursed, is it?"

"Don't debunk it, it's the one bright spot in my life," Jen sighs. "Xander called me a witch last week so now I'm trying to channel ley energy to ruin his football record. Oh, pasta salad, that's almost something a human would eat."

Ives pokes his tub of pasta doubtfully. "Are you sure?"

"Those are my friends, Xander!" someone exclaims from the direction of the tableful of jocks.

"Chill, dude, it was just a joke…"

One of the jocks—the one who stood up to Clarissa when she was making fun of Tim in Lit—picks up his tray and heads towards their table. Kon braces, but the other three don't seem concerned when he drags a chair from an adjacent table and sits between Ives and Tim.

"Oh, hey, it's the traitor," Jen says without heat.

"That's me," he responds with a fake salute. “Hey guys.”

"Hudson, hi," Tim says. "Thanks for earlier."

"Anytime. I'm sure Clarissa didn't actually mean it, anyway." He runs a hand over his short afro as he examines the tray. "Wow, real deluxe menu today, that's almost recognizable as meatloaf. Tim, you have got to get some funding into this cafeteria."

Tim shrugs as he lays out a large sandwich and a Tupperware full of yogurt and fruit. "So it turns out 'attentive parents' have this weird thing called a 'Daily Caffeine Limit', which means right now I'm too busy sourcing contraband Jolt." Tim kicks his backpack for emphasis and it clunks. Kon tries to hide his wince. "See you at the Math Bowl strategy meeting on Friday?"

"You know I would, Tim, but Gram says I can only do two extracurriculars this year and they need me on the baseball team. I'm doing Debate instead."

"Aw, man, we were counting on you…" Ives turns to Jen.

"Why are we all looking at me?"

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it…"

Tim bursts out laughing. "Ives, no—"

"...seduce some new blood for the Math Bowl Team. Ow, Tim!" Ives reaches down to rub his shin.

Jen rolls her eyes. "I'm sorry Mike was a dud, okay, I didn't think he was going to dump me at the winter dance!"

Tim looks at her over his sandwich. "Is that what happened? I'm sorry…"

"Yeah, you missed a lot over New Years’—"

"What the heck is a Math Bowl," Kon interrupts blankly. It sounds more like one of the traps Brainiac keeps setting for Clark than a high school activity. Or maybe one of Green Lantern's training holograms.

Kon pictures a green dome full of whirling digital symbols (also on fire, most likely, since Kyle loves setting things on fire when he's training—its one of Kon's favorite things about him), then realizes all of them have stopped talking to stare at him.

"What?"

Hudson raises an eyebrow. "What planet are you from again, and how are you dressed like that and don't know what Math Bowl is?"

For a second, Kon feels like everything is crashing down around him. Then, as he tries not to choke on his pasta, it sinks in that all of the heartbeats at the table are completely even besides his own.

Normal Human Joke, right, okay…I am also a normal human who likes normal human jokes.

"Hey!" Jen exclaims, saving Kon from needing to react. "Don't stereotype, it's a cute sweater. Ow, shit, my fishnets are caught on my fork again, Ives help…"

"Math Bowl is a problem-solving tournament," Tim explains, looking at Kon a little warily as Ives helps untangle Jen and clean up the tomato sauce from her jeans. "GCHS got all the way to Tristate last year."

"Nationals, even, but you weren't there for that because you were on that trip," Hudson adds.

"But like…why do that…?" Even if seeing advanced math doesn't make you feel sick, the idea just seems a bit…alien.

He does appreciate the irony, thank you.

Hudson shrugs. "It's fun, it's like jigsaw puzzles but I get extra credit."

"And matching shirts, can't forget the matching shirts," Ives says.

"I guess…" Kon says doubtfully. Then he realizes where the conversation has to be going.

Tim heads up GCHS’s Math Bowl team.

Tim is in Geometry class with Kon and saw his little accidental genius moment.

Tim invites Kon to join him for lunch…coincidentally with the rest of the Math Bowl team.

('They only care as long as you're useful—')

That explains why he was so attentive, at least.

Kon waits for Tim to tell the others and the peer pressure to start. He can’t see how he's supposed to get out of this without ending up either on the team or at the nurse's office and neither option is acceptable.

Tim tries to meet his eyes, but Kon looks down at his meatloaf instead.

Thinking normal human kids would be interested in him was nice while it lasted. At least he doesn’t have to pay attention to Tim again after this…except that they share almost every class. And what is Kon supposed to do if Tim keeps following him around? 

It’s not like he’s actually doing anything wrong by trying to help out the Math Bowl team, and of course he wouldn’t get why Kon isn’t interested if Kon can't explain it. And…he’s not scrawny, exactly, but one good shove from Kon could still put him through a wall if he let his powers get out of control again.

And then Kon would be even worse than Xander.

"We have a color printer at my place," Tim says. "Maybe I can make some recruitment posters. Anyway, enough about that, did any of you watch the talent show last week? I missed it."

…huh, Kon thinks. Maybe I judged too soon.

After that all of them start talking about various goings on at the school, brainstorming plans for the upcoming County level of the Math Bowl competition, and trying to convince Hudson that Math Bowl is preferable to Debate ("...you're trying to debate me out of Debate?"). The conversation starts moving too fast for Kon to follow—which shouldn't be a problem for a Kryptonian, even a kind of faulty one, but naturally his superspeed comprehension is another power that's not firing on all cylinders today.

All the new information, combined with the rest of the noise in the room, turns into a dizzy sort of swirl as Kon nibbles on his chocolate muffin. I wonder what Robin's doing right now, Kon thinks absently instead of struggling to focus.

He knows Robin goes to school, since it's school stuff as much as Bat Stuff that complicates his schedule. But with the kind of money the Bat has he definitely wouldn't send his protege to a mainstream school.

He must be at some fancy high-security private school learning, like, Latin and stuff. Probably some ivy-covered stone building out in the suburbs with horse riding for PE and a lacrosse team or something. Definitely not in the center of town with the local kids, eating tepid meatloaf and arguing over whether it's worse to be held hostage by Kite Man or Crazy Quilt.

He looks down at his tray to see the whole lunch is gone. 

Was that all? I'm going to have to ask Lois for… 

Kon breaks off, remembering he's here to prove he can make it on his own. If he can't even feed himself, why is he even bothering to try?

I'm going to have to learn how to pack a bigger lunch.

"...campus?"

Kon blinks and pulls the room back into focus as it sinks in that Tim's last remark was aimed at him. "Huh?" he says eloquently.

"I said, do you want me to show you around campus? We have a free period before Art."

“Oh.” Getting outside and moving a little does sound like it might help, after being stuck in one noisy building for five hours. And maybe he’ll have a chance to clear the air a little with Tim. “Uh…sure.”

“Great.”

Once Tim puts away his lunchbox and backpack and Kon retrieves his coat, Tim leads the way out of the south classroom wing into the central courtyard.

"I get that you want me on the Math Bowl Team," Kon says as they step through the doors.

Tim glances over, wincing a little. "Oh, yeah, that uh…wasn't too subtle, huh."

Kon leans on one of the pillars holding up the awning. "Yeah, man, you could just put it in lights on a Metropolis marquee if you wanted it to be discreet."

"Sorry…" Tim wedges the heels of his sneakers into the railing, bracing himself so he can perch hands-free. He doesn't look directly at Kon, but he's not deliberately facing away, either. "I wasn't going to put you on the spot. I just thought I'd introduce you, in case you were interested. But then I looked at the situation and you didn't seem down with it and I was like, wait, what am I doing, this is weird, this is something a weird person does."

"You're not weird," Kon says quickly, as Tim takes another drink from the thermos. "Except for that."

Tim laughs but it comes out a little thin in the cold wind outside. "That's not really the general consensus around here. Especially after…" he shrugs. "There was some stuff last year. You heard Xander."

Kon tries to imagine what the popular douchebag cafeteria chatter would be like about his own problems. Then he quickly stops imagining it, since Luthor already covers the major points every week. Damn, that would suck majorly. "It's cool if you don't want to talk about it."

Tim's shoulders relax a little under his jacket. "Thanks. And, look, I might have had a bit of an ulterior motive. I totally own that. But I won't bring up the math thing again, not unless you ask about the team. So…friends?"

Kon could snap at Tim for approaching him because he wanted something. He could do that, and Tim would stay away from him, and Kon would be at a permanent net zero in the friends department since it's not as if he'll be blending in with the jocks anytime soon. Besides, thinking back, Tim first helped him out in the halls before homeroom, well before the display in math class. So even if he isn't choosing to defend himself by bringing that up, he couldn't have meant all of it as a ploy.

And Kon sure had a massive ulterior motive when he first approached the last friend he made—namely, keeping Luthor happy and himself out of a Biological Waste canister. Trying to recruit for extracurriculars isn't even in the same solar system as what he's done, so it's not like he has a lot of room to judge, here.

"Why not." Kon grins and off the pillar. "Where else am I going to find a free tour guide?"

Tim laughs, then brings his legs over the railing and jumps to the lawn a foot below. Kon decides to take the two steps down to the path connecting the two halves of the school.

"Behold! Our luxurious facility," Tim declares, turning on the yellow winter grass (the heel of his sneaker leaves a bare muddy divot after he completes his spin) and gesturing around with the thermos. "Dead lawn one. Dead lawn two." He points to the center of the east lawn, which seems to be half-taken over by a giant ice blob. "The fountain Mr. Freeze broke last month. Still isn't fixed."

"Does, um, does that happen…often?" 

Kon stares at the mound of ice—several students are still sitting or lounging on what were originally the benches around the fountain but are now vaguely seat-shaped divots in the ice, most covered in blankets or old boards. Three cheerleaders in neon puffer coats are stacking to hang a hammock on a pair of steel rods hammered in near the top.

Everyone is cheerfully ignoring the 'DO NOT TOUCH ICE' sign.

Tim shrugs, squinting a little against the wind. "It's not always Mr. Freeze, if that's what you mean. But yeah, we usually get a couple villains a year. I think Jen has some pictures if you want to see."

"What the…" Kon says under his breath.

"'Officially'," Tim says in a mocking tone, "we are 'not allowed to use the shop class grinders to make snow cones'. Officially. Ask Hudson if you want to know where the flavor syrup stash is. Anyway, what else…oh yeah, hawk statue made out of old car parts…"

"It looks more like—"

"It's not a bat, everyone says it's a bat." Tim sighs and rolls his eyes. 

Maybe he doesn't like the Bats? From what Robin says, Gotham civilians aren't as excited about their local heroes as people are in Metropolis. They sure don't get invited to charity events or asked to guest at state fairs. 

Tim waves the thermos at a cluster of lush plants under the bell tower, the only healthy greenery on the grounds. "There's our rainforest garden. Poison Ivy made that for us during some community service thing and then every bat and police officer in the state swarmed the place. In the end it all checked out but...they still don't let us eat the pineapples. And then that bare spot up there on the tower is where we used to have our clock before the last Clock King safety warning. They keep saying they'll put it back up one of these days, I'll believe it when I see it. And there you have it for the outside…"

Tim jogs towards the steps up to the north building's outdoor corridor—it's higher set than the south side to offset the slope, so the first floor starts about five feet above the lawn—and perches on the steel-pipe railing a few steps up to wait for Kon. Kon isn't trying to be slow on purpose, there's just a lot to take in, even if Tim is completely blase about Gotham's supervillain chaos. 

I can't believe people actually live here…

"Nice sweater, by the way," Tim says once they're even, hopping down from the railing.

Kon sighs as he steps past and turns at the top of the stairs, facing down Tim. "Look, I'm a big boy, okay? I can take it. How bad is it? Not that my mom isn't great but I'm starting to think her fashion sense is a bit...Schroeder from Peanuts."

Tim blinks as the wind pulls at his hair, fluffing it up around his face and making him look much younger than tenth grade. Then a sharp playful smile breaks the illusion. "You're really asking?"

"I am so asking. Give it to me straight."

“Okay so you look like a librarian from the fifties got frozen in ice," Tim announces in his cheerful deadpan. "But not in a bad way!” he adds in a rush, waving the thermos. “Just in a Miss Marple’s long-lost brother way. But like, good. It works for you, in a distant-accountant-father-freaky-fridays-with-teenage-son kind of way.”

He takes a long drink of the Jolt coffee potion as Kon processes. Then he meets Kon’s eyes and they both burst out laughing.

“And you’ve been holding that in all day?” Kon manages when he’s stopped long enough to get air. He’s leaning on the railing so heavily he worries he’s dented it and takes a cautious glance behind him before standing up.

Tim shrugs, wheezing a little as he holds the cuff of his shirt over his eyes. “Yeah sorry…it really isn’t bad, it’s just…”

“It’s just not winning me any cool points, huh.”

"I'm so sorry to break it to you but it is not. Anyway, back the actual tour…most of the classrooms are in the south side, so the north side has the library, art studio, science labs…pool and gym are in the basement…”

The cold wind from outside has turned Tim’s cheeks a little pink under the freckles. Kon tries to follow where he’s pointing, instead of just staring. Still, he barely remembers the places they've passed through once they're in the Art classroom.

Art is actually enjoyable, which is good because Kon isn't sure he could take another incident after such an overwhelming day. If he had another math class he might have fled and called Tana, but Art, blessedly, is another solidly Luthor-free subject.

Lex only gave a shit about art when he wanted to launder money or write off wealth by stuffing priceless paintings in a warehouse never to be seen again. Otherwise he left everything up to the interior designers arranging his events. And if an interior designer was a cute chick Kon would sometimes follow her around to 'ask questions' because 'oh my gosh art is so interesting I find wow that's something we have in common isn't that wild'. 

Somehow this led to no phone numbers (okay, now Kon finds it less surprising). But Kon realizes he recognizes a lot of the prints in the art room.

The art studio is a comfortable feeling room, with wooden beams showing between large broad windows and posters, prints, and diagrams of color theory hung all over the walls. The shelves lining the back of the room are crammed with old and new projects in various stages of completion, giant tubs of broken crayons labeled 'To Melt', cans of paint, and stacks of construction paper and half cut up magazines.

The teacher, Ms. Fradon, a tall gray-haired woman in a bright granny-square kimono jacket, even lets them move freely around the room, standing at the worktables or sitting on the paint-spattered boards, instead of fussing when they aren't sitting neatly at their desks like in Lit.

Kon might be able to get used to this.

She glances over her gold-rimmed glasses at the class once they're all assembled. Her eyes settle on Kon, leaning against a table in the back by himself. (Tim is a few tables away, sitting crosslegged on top of the table where Ives and Jen are standing. He seems to like being on top of things.) "Aren't you new?"

Kon nods, which luckily seems to be all she expects.

"Ah, there you are on the list. Good afternoon, Kelly. You're just in time, we're picking partners for the spring project today."

This project is apparently a sculpture with the theme 'Spirit of Gotham'. "So you and your partner are going to think about what this city means to you, what your history is with the city, whether you find it welcoming or frightening, I won't grade you based on how much you like the place as long as you express your feelings in a creative way. Okay, time for teams, let's go." 

"You have five weeks to complete this project, and it will be 40 percent of your grade," she continues as they all line up to draw paper slips from an ornate porcelain teapot on her desk. "And, the two top graded pieces will be submitted for selection to the Coastal Grand Prix Youth Division, so if your team's piece is chosen the school will cover your cabin on the cruise ship hosting the event. Gotham hasn't been selected in four years and I really want another of these cute little trophies before I retire." 

She waves at a shelf behind her desk, holding three stained-glass trophies of ships in front of a sunset. "So please put in some marginal amount of effort, I'm not asking a lot here, am I? Also, most importantly…I'm about to swear, nobody tell the principal. Okay?" 

They all nod and she takes a deep breath, her gray hair almost vibrating as she shouts. "No goddamn clowns! I swear to God! Every year someone tries this shit! No clowns, no jack in the boxes, no harlequins, do you hear me Jared I will call your mother and show her those sketches. No! Damn! Clowns!" 

Kon at least knows enough about Gotham to know what that's all about. The Joker is bad news—even in Metropolis, most people don't talk about him carelessly. Robin never speaks his name at all: never talks about him in the first place if he can help it. The only time he came up in a conversation Robin just called him 'That One' in a strange strained voice, and Kon dropped the subject pretty quick.

The Joker, Kon has gathered, is not like, say, Lex, whose crimes all follow logical, if extreme and unconscionable goals. The Joker likes a narrative.

The school might be relatively unconcerned about Poison Ivy or Freeze, but Clearly Ms. Fradon feels an art project that might be taken as insulting the Joker or his signature theming would be a very bad idea in a Gotham city school. Most of the students also look solemnly in agreement, except for, presumably, Jared, who pouts for a moment and mutters something about Harley Quinn being 'so totally hot though'. Jenn throws a crayon at him.

She claps her hands and is instantly back to a cheerful smile. "Okay, now that we have that clear, time for the teams…raise your hand if you have the number I'm calling."

"Kill me now," Jen growls as she and Clarissa raise their hands.

Xander and Jared end up together, and Ives looks like he's going to collapse with relief when he's paired with Hudson.

Kon stares down at his slip of paper and the neat gel-penned number that will decide his fate.

Now there's something familiar, he thinks, and barely holds in a sharp laugh at how ridiculous it is to compare this with the development lab.

"Team 8?"

Kon raises his hand without looking.

"Kelly and…Timothy, no, you like Tim better, see, I remember…next, Team 9…"

"Good thing we didn't have a fight over Math Bowl, huh?" a voice says in his ear.

“Whoa!” Kon loses his grip on the edge of the table and slides to the floor with a yelp. "When did you—"

"Don't break anything important over there," Ms. Fradon calls out mildly. "It took me seven years to talk administration into buying new tables. Team 10?"

"Sorry." Tim looks over the edge of the table and whispers. "I didn't think I was that quiet…"

"Nah, you're good, I just—didn't expect you there."

"My brother says the same thing when I skateboard down the stairs," Tim says as Kon grabs the table and pulls himself back up.

"What a shock." Kon brushes some paint flakes off his pants, but not all of it comes off and he ends up leaving colored smears on the khaki. Superboy's next mission: learn how to do laundry. 

"So do you have any ideas? For this project thing."

"I just got to Gotham yesterday," Kon points out, considering whether it's safe for him to sit on the table next to Tim or if he's more likely to just break it and blow his whole secret.

"Oh, right." Tim says thoughtfully. "Maybe I can take time off from Math Bowl to show you around later this week."

"Now that all the teams are assigned," Ms. Fradon announces, "let's go through the specifications for your project so that you don't end up disqualified from the competition."

The bell rings while she's still explaining the exact dimensions, the allowable materials, and the accepted degree to which parents and guardians are allowed to assist in the project, not that this is a problem for Kon.

Tim shoves his thermos into his backpack and slings it over his shoulder. "Love to hang out today but there's some stuff going on at home. See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I need to do some shopping anyway. See you around."

"See you!" Tim slides off the table and jogs out of the classroom, dodging between Jared and Xander and ignoring their indignant yells. By the time Kon makes it through the doors he's out of sight, which means Kon can heave his giant sigh of relief without worrying about questions.

Day One: survived.

Somehow. Barely.

What Kon wants to do after leaving is to go 'home' to the tattered Victorian house Tana's friend gave them the keys to and sleep for a week—he doesn't always need sleep but right now he feels like he's going to crash. Maybe Gotham's dark smoggy skies are messing with his solar levels. But he's also starving after the extremely non-Super portions at lunch, so clearly the first step has to be groceries.

In Metropolis, Kon mostly survives on delivery: he still hasn't moved into a place with a real kitchen, even though he could probably afford it by now, so he has standing orders with the closest pizza places and of course there's his lifetime McDonald's discount he got in return for a sponsorship. Lois sometimes comes by with paper bags full of surplus cans and frozen dinners, since she still doesn't remember half the time that she's only shopping for one. And after Kon casually mentioned during his first visit to Kansas that he loved the Kent family's ancestral potato salad, Clark flies in a giant tub full almost every other week.

But up until now, the closest Kon has been to grocery shopping was attending the grand opening of a new supermarket in the Metro suburbs. And even there he was just hanging out with Kara in the parking lot, eating free Sonic ice cream bars while she led elementary school kids around on Comet.

Note to self: I really need to acquire an animal sidekick if I want to corner the ten-and-under market, Kon thinks, kicking an abandoned can out of the way and wincing as it hits a dumpster twenty yards away.

Even with his powers still spiking every few minutes, walking through the mostly-empty streets is still easier than being in the crowded school. It's a little easier to process things when he can move, Kon is realizing—in the classroom all he can do is sit there and take it, without anything to distract himself.

The streets of Gotham are narrower and darker than Kon is used to. Especially since walking, like, on the actual ground, with his feet, has never been a hobby of his before. Unless he's driving to an event, or hanging out with a human—meaning a non-Bat human, like Lois or Tana—he usually just launches up far enough that he can cruise from point A to point B in a straight line.

It's weird. Kind of like being an evil forest, just one made of brick and rusting fire escapes instead of trees and vines. But he finds he's strangely unbothered by the hidden, shielded feeling of walking through a narrow alley that practically swallows him up.

Even if Luthor had any clue Kon was here, instead of in Marseilles with Tana, he'd never be able to track him. Not the way he could in the open, airy streets of Metropolis.

Kon gets lost about four times before he finds the supermarket. Getting lost is also new—maybe he should buy a map. It's harder to keep track of where he's going on the ground. 

The light outside, not that it was ever bright, is already dimming by the time he grabs a cart from the parking lot and heads through the doors. As the peppy pop music playing over the store speakers starts to blend with the chatter of shoppers and crying children, Kon searches for some sound further away he can latch onto before everything spirals again.

Someone is listening to music in a car across the parking lot, or maybe on one of the nearby balconies for a smoke break. It's hard to judge distances here. Kon latches on to it—alt-rock isn't usually his thing, but it's different enough to stand out so he'll take it for now. The audio is quiet, a little buzzy, like it's playing through a Walkman or a hand held radio that's been dropped a few times.

As Kon finds his way through the maze of bright lights and dazzling colored packaging (Gotham, he notices, does not carry the superhero branded items that are popular in Metropolis, which might explain why nobody's recognized him yet) he listens to the distant music go from Pearl Jam to Foo Fighters: he at least knows that much from working in a radio station. By the time he finishes filling the cart with cereal, frozen dinners, something he sure hopes is laundry detergent, and one head of celery to make it look like he knows what he's doing with this whole normal human shopping thing, it's pitch dark. 

The music is still going, but by this point he can tell it’s moving gradually through the surrounding blocks, like someone is cruising around on a motorcycle. Or, since there isn’t any engine noise covering the music, maybe just a regular bike.

"Your mom waiting outside, kid?" the cashier asks, nodding towards the windows looking out on the lot. "Gotta be careful this time of day."

Thanks for the concern, citizen, but there's not much that can hurt this Superboy besides Mariah not picking up the phone, he's about to say, then looks down at his sweater and remembers. "Uh, yeah, she's…waiting right around the corner," he tells the guy as he hands him a couple twenties. "Thanks though."

He drops the change into a donation jar for a local cat shelter and starts the six-block trip to the house.

Or with a quick shortcut…maybe four.

The embarrassing thing is that, since he's still focusing on the distant music, he doesn't hear the man with the gun until he almost walks into him.

"Put the groceries down and hand over your wallet, kid. This doesn't have to hurt."

Kon stares blankly for a second, trying to distinguish shapes in the dark until a strip of moonlight glints on the gun. "Oh my god," he says finally. "This is really happening."

Of course it would be right as he starts looking forward to making it home and relaxing in front of the TV. At this rate he's going to miss all the good shows.

There are two of them, one holding the gun pointed at Kon, the other standing behind him with his arms folded. They're both big—if Kon was a normal human boy, they wouldn't even need the weapon, but probably it keeps things efficient.

"Yeah it's happening, come on kid, let's go!"

Well, you asked for it, Kon thinks. He can take them both down before they can even figure out what happened, so his secret identity is safe. The question is how to do it.

He could just let the man shoot him before closing the distance. He's been shot before—he usually tries to dodge, since he's not quite as durable as Clark and it tends to sting a little, but he can put up with it. But even if this is a totally lame and nerdy sweater, it’s still a sweater Tana bought for him, and he can’t let it get destroyed the first time he wears it.

First he needs to take the gun out of the picture. A quick blast of heat vision to make him drop it should take care of that. Clark does it out of costume in emergencies, and if Kon doesn't hold up the beam long enough to be fully visible they won't be able to tell what's going on. Then he can take them both down and call the police from a payphone.

Might as well give them a chance first, he decides. They don't look like they have insurance and this next part is going to be expensive.

“Come on, man, we don’t have to do this,” Kon tries, already judging how much speed he can make in the narrow alley without accidentally crushing one of the muggers. He reaches for his glasses so he won't melt them.

“Yeah, I think we do.”

“I agree,” says a voice from above, and a green-and-red shadow lands on the man with the gun.

Kon isn't sure what's happening for a moment—he flails backward and lands heavily on one of the heaps of trash lining the alley. Then, as he scrambles to his feet and out of the way, he sees who just arrived. 

Kon has never seen Robin fighting on his own territory before. Not that he wasn't impressive in Metropolis, but since most of the time it seemed to turn into The Let's All Throw Robin Off Increasingly Tall Buildings Show he wasn't exactly in his element.

Here in Gotham he's—beautiful. Kon forgets all about his own plan to defend himself and stares open-mouthed, ignoring his exhaustion as Kryptonian sight takes in each pure fluid moment, the perfect transitions between forms, the sweep and flow of the cape, the staff moving like it's part of him.

It's almost musical, how smooth and controlled each movement is.

It is musical, Kon realizes.

'That’s me in the corner,

That's me in the spotlight,

Losing my religion…'

The distant alt rock he's been listening to vaguely all evening is playing through Robin's tiny earpiece.

Kon feels like he could watch him for hours, but it only takes a few seconds before both muggers drop. One is unconscious—the other scrambles stiffly to his feet and bolts.

Robin lets him run a few meters, then throws an R-star over his shoulder without looking. It banks between the walls twice, then hits the second mugger in the side of the head and drops him in a heap.

“Holy shit,” Kon breathes, and Robin finally looks at him. He clicks something in his glove and the music stops.

Kon waits for the magic moment to end. For Robin to look him over and burst out laughing at the utterly ridiculous idea that he could fool anybody into thinking he was actually human with…what, a pair of glasses and an unfashionable sweater?

Sure, Robin wouldn’t mean anything by it. It just wouldn’t occur to him that Kon is really trying this time, that he wants to play by the human rules without help. Why else would he have picked a spot that hampered his powers so much?

"R-robin," he starts, since of course Robin wouldn't want him to use the intimate nickname during business hours.

“That's me. Are you hurt?” Robin says, the white lenses fixed on him intently as he tilts his head. “They won't bother you any more, but It isn’t safe to take the back streets at this time of night.”

Kon’s about to open his mouth to say, well, obviously he’s not hurt, so stop teasing, when it hits him.

The edge of playfulness that always underlies Robin’s voice when he talks to Superboy isn’t there. Instead he's speaking in a deliberate, serious voice, like he's trying to sound a little older than…however old Robin is.

This isn't his Birdie.

This is Robin. Robin talking to a random civilian.

He genuinely has no idea.

Once he goes back to Metropolis Kon needs to give Clark some apologies for rolling his eyes at all his secret identity pointers. It really is all about expectations.

Kon is still taller than Robin, even in this nerdy disguise, and still perfectly aware that he has super-strength. But something about the way Robin straightens up and just stares, the white lenses more unnerving than ever in the sickly Gotham moonlight, dredges up some strange primal feeling of vulnerability that prickles at his spine. 

It's weird.

It's also very hot.

Kon leans back, pressing against the brick as Robin takes a step closer.

What is he supposed to do about this? He can't expect Robin to stay in the dark forever…but isn't it the best way to prove he can hold up a secret identity? He can tell him later, once he's made his point. It will be funny. They can both laugh about it, and then maybe go on a real date or something.

Maybe Robin won't like being tricked like this. 

But...

Maybe this way Kon can figure out what it is in the city that's pulling Robin away from him.

Maybe it's Robin's turn not to know everything.

Maybe Kon's earned a chance to hold some cards for once.

“Is something—”

Kon finally manages to kick his brain into gear past the shock. “I’m, I’m fine,” he stammers. “I just moved in. From out of town. Because I’m not from around here.” Wow, convincing. Master of disguise over here.

Robin blinks behind the mask. “Somehow I guessed that.”

"Yeah…well, uh." What do people say when they get rescued? He's usually too busy with the actual rescuing to remember how anyone reacts. "Thank you for your time?"

"Sure," Robin says. "Now go home. And don't take any more shortcuts: I can't be everywhere."

"Roger that." Kon steps away from the wall and brushes some of the dirt off his pants.

"Here," Robin says, shoving the crumpled grocery bag into his hands. "I think the celery was a loss."

"...that's fine," Kon says weakly as Robin gives him another long look.

"Okay. Next time just…be more careful."

Robin turns away and—

Vanishes into the dark, like he never existed.

So that's what the cape is for.

Chapter Text

It's hard to get used to the new bed. Or, well, not new, just whatever was there when Tana's friend picked up the keys. So it's probably pretty old, actually. Kon has one of two rooms that used to be rented out to college students, so he's keeping some of the last person's posters—baseball, surfing, all normal human boy stuff. Even though Kelly Clark has never really existed, Kon feels strangely like he's taken over someone else's life. A normal human boy, with a normal human mother. (Okay, not normal. Very cool and smart, Kon amends.)

While they were setting up over the weekend, Tana poked through the master bedroom and scattered some of her fake-mom things around strategically. 

"Just so you won't look abandoned when your friends come over,” she explained as she cracked the spine of a paperback mystery novel and set it open on the nightstand next to a seashell-covered frame. “Don't look at me like that! I'm sure you'll make friends. Hm, should I be a doily person…no, that is a bridge too far."

He's used to living in an old building, and he far prefers his studio behind Galactic Talent, or Lois' aging brick apartment, to the grand glass cage Luthor kept him in. It's being on the ground floor he doesn't like. He feels vulnerable there, like a bird that fell out of a tree. And even if he knows there's very little in this city that could hurt him besides the Bats themselves, not being able to sense threats coming makes him nervous.

Kon listens for Robin's music all through the rest of the night, but he doesn't turn his radio back on.

Eventually Kon falls into a fitful sleep, jolting awake to his alarm what feels like only minutes later. Even after throwing all the windows open for as much sun as he can, he's still drowsy. At least none of the fading dreams were the one with Luthor and the faceless civilian Robin and the gun...

Kon rubs his eyes, then stares in the mirror and asks himself if he really wants to keep doing this. It might be better in the long run just to call the whole thing off, email Robin and explain what happened, and go back to Metropolis. Now, before things get too deep.

But then he's just back to his original problem—Luthor's attempts to shove him beyond the pale, Lois and Superman's overwhelming public relationship, Robin's strange distance. He can't afford to give up now: if he bails he might as well forget being real. He'll be stuck in his own halfway house forever.

And besides, if Kon flees now he'll be leaving Tim to finish that whole project by herself, and he's heard plenty of Lois' rants about flaky collaborators. He can't just ditch the kid with no warning. What if he ends up being the third member of Xander's team?

That, and…

Well, some of it was kind of fun. 

Not the parts where he thought he was going to burn down the school by accident, or the part where he had a panic attack because of a math problem. Obviously.

The parts where he was in a crowd of normal human kids and they only thought he was different because of normal human high school drama. The parts where he was listening to the kids at lunch joking about the debate team. The parts where Tim led him around the school, pointed out all the supervillain points of interest and, yes, utterly roasted his sweater.

He doesn't want to give up and run away from this life just yet.

Something in the back of his mind still tells him it's a bad idea. Maybe it's Luthor. Maybe he's right, even. 

But thinking about the other kids—thinking about Tim—is enough to get Kon into normal human clothes (a denim jacket over a long sleeved polo today, still kind of nerdy but hopefully less of an immediate target) and out the door that morning.

And the next.

And the one after that.

And then, well, why not stick with it as long as it works?

Tuesday, Week One

Now that he knows what to expect and how to brace for the sensory impact, he isn't instantly overwhelmed the second he steps into the hall. It's still a lot to take in, and homeroom is half over by the time he can actually make out individual words. But it's…manageable. Sort of.

He even makes it to class on time, since he knows to dodge past Xander instead of accidentally engaging in some human teenage boy threat display.

Tim is the one who's late, wandering in blearily with a can of Cherry Pepsi and shrugging when the homeroom teacher sighs at him. ('Of course Richie Rich doesn't get marked tardy,' Clarissa stage-whispers.) He even sleeps through Algebra, which is bad, because Kon had been hoping to use him as a distraction and instead he has nothing to do but pay attention.

At least there's no pop quiz today, so he doesn't scare himself again by going all the way into calculator mode. He doodles through most of it, until the teacher walks by and crouches by the desk, asking him in a whisper if he's struggling.  "I can send your mom some information about after school tutoring…?"

And obviously there's no way in hell he's letting that happen, clearly the last thing he needs to solve his math trauma is more math, and he can't let on he's good at this either because even if he can trust Tim to be chill, Jen is in this class too and she might be more persistent about recruiting. So he shrugs and mumbles vaguely about getting used to the new mom and the new school and the new city and she backs off, though she still keeps sending him concerned looks all through class.

He starts copying down the processes she demonstrates on the board, step by step. He can feel his mind trying to get ahead of her without his permission but fights it down to concentrate on each number and symbol. He still feels sick by lunch, and he sprints out of the room as soon as the bell rings, but he made it.

Kon takes a lunch tray—today it’s something that could generously be described as pizza—and settles at the nerd table, getting out the extra food he brought from home. No famine for Superboy today.

Tim is already dozing in front of his lunchbox when he reaches the table. Kon watches as Jen steals his chocolate chip cookies. 

“Sorry about him,” Ives says, nudging Tim’s shoulder and only getting a vague mumble in response. “Come on, dude, wake up and smell the…” He leans over and checks the lunchbox. “Tuna sandwich.”

“Fine…” Tim props his head up on one hand as Ives unwraps the sandwich and puts it in his other hand.

Maybe there's something to be said for faces—Kon tries to imagine what Robin might look like, sulking in that soft sleep-fogged way, and comes up with nothing. Even with the mask, Robin tends to keep his expressions guarded, keeping a slight veneer up even when they're alone together and never entirely letting himself go. 

Perhaps, for an unpowered hero, it's one of the few ways he can keep an edge on the heavy hitting supervillains. When Robin was locked in the cell in Luthor's basement there was no slow transition to consciousness: he was out one moment and fully alert the next, in a matter of a few sharp heartbeats. Kon wasn't there to see, since he was two floors up getting yelled at by Luthor, but he heard the change.

The most vulnerable he's ever seen Robin is probably after their fight with the second clone, when they kissed. When Robin almost took the mask off. But Kon had his eyes half burned out at the time, so he didn't get to enjoy it as much as he could have.

The way Tim's hand is squishing his cheek is kind of cute, Kon thinks absently as he tries to take a bite of his own pizza and misses his mouth completely. I’ll just…pretend that was Gotham messing with my powers again.

“He gets like this sometimes,” Ives explains. “You met him on a more lucid day. He’s fun when he’s awake, though.”

Tim makes an annoyed noise around the sandwich. Or he was probably trying to, but it’s more of a drowsy sigh. “Working on my Zelda speedrun…very important…” 

Ives sighs and shrugs. "See?"

With the pizza gone, Kon opens one of the Trix yogurts he bought last night (the plastic is only slightly crunched after the run-in with Robin) and stares. “Is it…supposed to look like that?”

Hudson laughs next to him. “Yeah, my Gram never buys it. Says I’m only allowed to eat things in colors God invented.”

Jen leans over to look. “Yikes, the heck did they dye that with, Kryptonite?”

"Can't be," Hudson says, "didn't Superboy do that commercial?"

"Somehow I think if he'd actually looked at the stuff he might have turned it down…" Kon mumbles, poking at it cautiously with his spoon.

The rest of the day isn't particularly memorable. Kon discovers he's adept at chemistry, but it's less shocking than math since it isn't as closely associated with Luthor's own personality. He manages to let it blur without getting too disconcerting—it helps that he at least knows some of the general terminology from following the researchers around in the secret labs, even if he was never paying enough attention back then to realize he understood them, so if he tries he can pretend the knowledge is from that instead and almost believe it.

After school, Kon skips going shopping again because, you know, same thing, different results, insanity, or whatever Lois always quotes when she's laughing about Superman's repeat villain customers. Although technically, he supposes if he tried to get mugged to attract Robin he would be hoping for the same result, which seems equally desperate. Instead he grabs an armful of hotdogs from a convenience store and gets to work cleaning some of the college students' junk out of the house, starting with the living room since Tana helped him clean the kitchen before she left.

He can't use superspeed for this. Or, well, he probably could, since this block is pretty bare. None of the neighbors in the strip of dilapidated single-family homes have paid the slightest attention to Kon yet, and the half-collapsed apartments on the other side of the alley out back seem empty of any legitimate residents. But there's always the chance Robin might pass by again (again, not that he's desperate), so normal human speed it is. 

It's boring, and dirty, and awkward, but the repetitive cycle is still soothing in some strange way. Maybe it's because of just how different it is from his usual life in Metropolis; nobody's looking at him, for one thing, and it's utterly unglamorous and the opposite of photogenic. Angela would be horrified to see the dirt smudged on his face and the dust all over his shirt.

Filling up garbage bags and carrying them out to the curb, trying to figure out the exact ratio of how much he can carry to feel slightly super about it while still remaining plausibly human, is weirdly calming: like getting in the zone to improve his Donkey Kong score. And somehow, even though he's helped clear away rubble and redirect rivers in seconds, it feels like he's really accomplishing something as the piles of trash slowly disappear to reveal an avocado-colored carpet.

…It would feel slightly more rewarding if the carpet was less ugly—Tana's friend only asked for a new coat of paint but this place needs serious help. Maybe if he's in Gotham long enough he can do something about that.

By the time it gets dark, he's unearthed more of the floor as well as the TV from under a pile of pizza boxes, broken sports equipment, and clearly unread textbooks. And so, so, so many beer cans.

Kon blows dust off the TV screen and picks up the yellowed hometown snow globe one of the students left on top. 

'Love from Oregon, Sis', someone has scrawled on the bottom. For a moment, Kon imagines a world where Krypton never exploded and Kara gives him a snow globe when he leaves to study abroad on Earth, then remembers in a world like that he would never have existed. And probably everyone would be happier, except Kon, who wouldn't know any better due to the not existing. 

But right now he likes existing, and Kara likes having a kid brother, at least when she isn't losing to him at Mario Kart (there’s one way I’m ahead of you, fake sis), so he isn't about to feel bad about it. It's just…another reminder he's different.

Kon sets the snow globe back down on the TV and reaches for the power switch. "Okay, if this doesn't have cable I'm calling Tana for my parachute," he announces to the universe at large, not that he really means it. But somehow, legal or not, it does still have cable, once he x-rays the whole house and finds the remote in a bag of the stalest cat food ever to exist. Kon never took the chance to complain about the super-smell during any of his visits to Luthor and it's looking like a more and more severe oversight every minute he's in Gotham.

Now that he can listen to the TV while he works, the normal speed chores feel less like he's trudging through soup. Soon, he's cleared enough room in front of the TV that he can curl up with the rest of his hotdogs for reruns of Party of Five.

Things are looking up for this completely normal human boy.

Wednesday, Week One

Spanish, Kon discovers, is great. It’s the first class outside of Art that he genuinely likes and looks forward to again once it's over. Tim isn't there, since he's taking German instead, but even if he knew that Kon thinks he'd have gone with Spanish as his language elective anyway.

Luthor, to the utter lack of surprise of everyone who has ever been within a mile of him, is one of those 'if you're in America speak English' people, because he's never found a hill he couldn't be a complete piece of shit on. Even while he was literally creating illegal aliens in his basement—honestly it would be funny if the man wasn’t planning to run for office. Still is, probably, but the Lanterns might get involved if his write-in campaign from prison goes anywhere. 

Naturally he never bothered imprinting Kon with anything except English, and Kon learned quickly not to express interest in anything else. He's pretty sure a catering manager even got fired for teaching him a few phrases of Tagalog—sorry about that, Thea.

But Kon likes languages, and picks them up quickly when he's not forcing himself not to. Kara, the only surviving and non-evil native speaker of Kryptonian, says his accent is surprisingly good, better than Clark's ('but don't tell him okay promise!'). Something to do with clone age and brain plasticity or something. Martian Manhunter explained some of it when Kon visited the Watchtower but he was stressing about looking at his double through the glass so he wasn't paying a ton of attention at the time.

Anyway, Kon has thought for a while that it would be helpful to know Spanish for community events, so kids can follow along without needing to translate for siblings or parents or vice versa. Or just for his usual superhero work, because when a building is on fire you need to get the important details about who's left inside really fast and there's way too much risk in gestures.

And even though he’s thoroughly behind in Spanish I, he’d much rather be behind than the disturbing knowing/not knowing from Math. Luckily for him, they’re early enough in the semester that the teacher is still covering relatively basic grammar, so he isn’t completely lost. It's sure easier than Kryptonian. Like, who on Krypton decided verbs were going to change gender in the middle of a sentence? Who has time for that? If Kon ever learns that running-really-fast-go-back-in-time trick he’s going to have strong words with some linguists.

Even being stuck in a conversation group with Clarissa is surprisingly tolerable. She seems a bit nicer when Xander or his favorite target Tim aren't around—maybe she feels like she has something to prove. Kon knows what that's like.

"My mother is from Chile," Clarissa says. "For real, she is. But we, uh, we don't really talk about it," she adds quietly in English.

"My mother is from Hawaii. Stepmom, I mean, but that's not in this chapter…"

“Madrastra.”

"Gracias."

She rolls her eyes and flicks her blond ponytail back behind her shoulder so it doesn’t hide the letter on Xander’s varsity jacket. "Have to make sure you don't drag me down if we end up on a skit group together, right? Keep up, Fair Isle."

Kon sighs and looks down at his sweater, dark blue dotted with a herd of white sheep and one black one. He thought it was less nerdy than the rest when he put it on that morning. "It's Kelly—"

"Whatever."

Okay, so she isn't about to turn into a teddy bear, but it's still progress, he decides.

History is fine, if boring, especially since the textbook is really dense and full of historical documents in fine print and overwrought old-fashioned language—like, get to the point, Hamilton, damn. But when the teacher is actually explaining how all the different events and political movements connect it gets kind of interesting. Tim is clearly into it, since he stays awake the whole time and asks questions instead of doodling caricatures of Washington and Paine in his notebook like Kon.

Bio gets pretty weird, since not only is that a preloaded subject courtesy of Lex, it's a module on genetics and thus starts hitting way too close to home. Kon does have to bail once, but at least he can feel it coming this time so he makes it look a little more normal than bolting out the door like he's Aquaman running out of water. Once he sneaks back in, he spends most of the remaining time before the bell rings watching a baseball game through the wall dividing the classroom from the teachers' break room.

Tim isn't there to see it, since he's in all advanced science classes—from the student chatter he should be in advanced math, too, but dropped back into standard classes last year. On the one hand, it's a relief not to worry about Tim chasing him down every time he starts freaking out about what Luthor did to him. There's only so many times that can happen before the allergy excuse wears out (Kon strongly suspects that the number of times is 'anything more than one'). On the other hand, it was sort of a relief to have someone there that first time. Without that heartbeat to grab onto he might have completely flipped.

That was how he felt the first time he ran into Robin—one of the reasons he got so reckless towing him all over town, even to places he knew, or should have known if he wasn't so distracted, Luthor would be watching. He just…needed to hold on to him. That they both made it out of the whole mess mostly okay is a testament to Robin's resourcefulness far more than Superboy's competence. Tim is just a normal kid, so Kon needs to keep himself under control and make sure nothing puts his new human friends in danger.

When he gets home, he breaks out a cassette player that the last student left in his bedroom and lets the Spanish tapes from the textbook play while he cleans. 

As he drags more garbage bags out to the curb, Kon watches the Gotham gloom briefly light up in a spray of crimson and gold, casting warm tones over the jagged downtown skyline until the dark spires look like they’d fit better in the opening of Beauty and the Beast. He stares, fascinated, until the lights fade.

Maybe there’s a reason people live here after all.

He's midway through digging out the couch when something makes him snap to attention. 

The heavy cloud of around bouncing off the smog, and Gotham's strange damper on his senses, means it takes him a half-minute of stress to grasp what it was that he alerted to—the soft tinny buzz of Robin's radio, playing Oasis.

‘...Who wants to be alone when we could be alive instead…’

Kon almost runs out to look, but Robin is halfway across town, so another encounter would just make him even more suspicious. Still…maybe if he stayed out of sight and just watched…

But he's not just here to stalk his own boyfriend (if that's what they still are), and there's a couch somewhere in the Gotham U Jurassic layer that needs excavation. Where's Sam Neill when you need him, Kon thinks as he grabs a pile of warped records too quickly and feels them snap in his hands.

If following Robin around like a lost Kryptonian clone puppy is out, analyzing his taste in music for the next hour is very, very in.

He seems to rotate through a couple custom channels that run on a loop: one full of alt rock, mostly bands Kon knows even if he doesn't usually listen to them outside of guest DJ slots, and one with some kind of ancient British folk stuff that Kon has never run into before. From the way the sound travels, drifting back and forth across the city and occasionally staying in one place with scuffling noises, Robin's using the alt playlist for real action, and the folk when he's just cruising.

'All around my hat,
I will wear the green willow…'

Sometimes he even sings along with a couple lines, which is totally cute, and which Kon is sure he'd never do if he thought anyone was listening. He's never given Kon any inclination of what he's into except for vaguely mentioning opera once, and who knows if that's even true—he might have said it just because Kon was needling him. 

He sure never has the music in Metropolis, though that seems to be because his playlist radio's range is pretty short—Kon hears it go fuzzy under the rush of wind as Robin swings by the waterfront.

'...reason why I'm wearing it—'

Robin breaks off for a moment with a breathless half-laugh behind the music: he must have done a flip. '...far far away…'

Kon remembers watching him that first night in Metropolis, sweeping through the air and running across ledges like he was weightless—he felt a little jealous at first that he looked so happy. That at least that didn't seem to be an act, despite the mask. Then all he wanted was to have some of that for himself, and he got more than he ever dreamed could be possible.

It's weird finally learning things about Robin without him having any idea Kon is there. Things he knows he'd rather keep to himself. Or maybe, if Kon actually asked, he'd have said something, but Kon never actually tried, did he—rather than having an awkward conversation he decided to spy on Robin instead.

Suddenly, Kon remembers the way Luthor used to constantly track him in Metropolis: and the way he used Kon to track Robin.

He turns up the tapes and tries to stop listening.

'...false, deluding young man,
Goodbye, farewell he…'

Chapter Text

Thursday, Week One

Kon stops with a swirl of superspeed wind behind Tana's beach chair.

“Hey Tana! Feel like signing some permission slips?”

“Ohmigosh—”

Kon swoops up to snatch the book out of the air before it can land in a tide pool, and floats a few feet back from the force as it hits him. “Wow, good arm, that is seriously heavy for a beach read.”

“Catching up on my biographies.” Tana laughs and stretches before setting down her drink and picking up her hat off the end of the chair. 

Kon glances down at her beach tote and sees it straining with dense hardbacks with boring titles and, x-ray vision confirms, absolutely no pictures besides grainy black-and-white photos. "Tana, you like…know what a vacation is, right? You're supposed to have fun."

“I am having fun!" Tana replies. "Do you know how long it's been since I got to sit and read without someone yelling ‘standby’ three minutes later?”

“That’s what comics are for, not…” Kon looks down at the book he’s holding. “The House of Morgan.”

“Teenagers.” Tana sighs. “Besides, I gotta research the market so I can make my book on Luthor a best-seller…of course the bastard’s got to die first, but maybe Lois can do a girl a favor one of these days and hurry that along.” She shrugs. “So. I take it you aren’t giving up yet?”

Kon shakes his head, a little surprised when he doesn't catch his bangs in the corner of his eyes, then remembers he re-curled it with gel on the way over the Atlantic. He nearly face planted into a dolphin in the process, so hopefully Flipper will be chill and keep his little beak shut because it's not like Kon desperately wants Tempest to think he's cool or anything except he does, okay, he does want that. 

"It's, uh. It’s not exactly—" like Saved by the Bell, Kon starts to say, then stops himself so he doesn't sound completely clueless. "How I expected, but yeah, it's fine. I like Spanish. And Art. My team partner is nice. I was going to show you my collage but I didn't want to get it wet, sorry."

During Thursday's art period, Ms. Fradon spent half the time lecturing about the history of collage and pop art, announced a field trip to the Gotham Museum of Art the following Wednesday, then turned them loose to experiment and discuss their upcoming project. Tim, slightly more awake that day since he made a tradeoff of home-cooked shortbread for Jolt with Ives, made some kind of funky video game inspired thing. "Which I am hiding as soon as I get home," he declared, "because there's no room on the fridge as it is." He didn't sound upset though, just kind of baffled.

Kon spent most of the time playing around with stencils and stamps, but he did have a vaguely presentable kind of psychedelic tree by the time class ended, as well as an agreement to meet up with Tim next weekend to get started on their sculpture for real. Maybe he'll even be awake for it this time, who knows.

"Aw, I'd love to see it," Tana says as she takes the book back. "Maybe you can get a picture and bring that next time. Are the other kids treating you okay?”

“Sure, mostly,” Kon says, trying to sound optimistic. Tana hums thoughtfully but doesn’t press him to explain further, so he reaches into his jacket and holds out the permission slip. “Feel like an autograph? I can just forge it if you want, but I figured since I was coming anyway…”

Tana takes it, her eyebrows going up. “Wow, you have blanket permission to sign my name to anything and you’re still checking in? You are the perfect child, damn.” She sits back down on the chair and fishes in her beach tote for a pen.

Kon stares at her blankly for a second, waiting for her to explain the punchline. Luthor always goes on about how nobody would ever want him if they didn’t either feel an obligation to him or have something they wanted to use him for. And Kon can't shake the idea, though he always tells himself he doesn’t believe him. But Tana…well, Tana’s getting a free vacation out of this, even if she’s spending it reading Ron Chernow. Does that count?

Tana sets the permission slip on the book and signs it with a flourish. “It’s a good signature, I shouldn’t waste it. There you go, S.B., enjoy your art museum. They really take you on good field trips up there, huh? Pretty swanky for a city school.”

“Is it?” Kon takes the permission slip back and looks it over again.

“Beats the lobster cannery I went to in eighth grade. Must have good donors.” Tana picks up her drink to take another sip, then pauses. “I’m not expensing this, to be clear.”

“It’s GBS money, not mine,” Kon shrugs. “Expense away, I won’t narc. I’m not even showing up to work, so who’s judging, right?”

“See, this is why we work so well together…By the way, Terry called, I told him you were at a club but you'd call back. The number's written by the ph—"

Before she even finishes the word, Kon is standing by the phone in Tana’s suite, halfway through dialing the number scrawled on the notepad.

"Hi, you've reached—"

“Terry! Hey, it's Superboy, how are things going?”

“Fine,” ‘Terry’ replies, but he sounds tired, in a way Kon can’t put entirely up to the time difference. Maybe even a little annoyed. “Angela is looking at some bookings for the summer, once you get back. Enjoying Europe?”

“Yeah, yeah, it's great, listen, it’s been a while so I was wondering when we could—”

Kon can hear an insistent beeping on the other end of the line. Robin sighs, a little more of his Bat voice washing into Terry’s usual peppy motivational-seminar speech patterns. “Dammit, again…look, would love to talk more, but things are a little all-hands at—my old agency. Send a postcard to Galactic or something. Bye.”

“Wait, there’s something—”

“Good news?” Tana pants from the doorway. “Ah, guess not,” she says as she sees his face. "Look, Kon…" she sighs. "I know you're close with him since he helped you out a lot getting started. But lately Terry has been such a flake—maybe you should think about letting him go. Your business is doing great, kid, you don't need him.”

If you only knew, Kon thinks, staring at the receiver still in his hands as if that will bring Robin's voice back. Which is dumb, and also desperate, so he shrugs and hangs it up, hoping it looks casual and businesslike. “He’s not doing it on purpose. He’s just on commission, he has other clients…”

“So do you want to explain why exactly you look like someone kicked your kitten every time he hangs up on you?”

Tana is starting to get that Metro Harbor look on her face again. Kon quickly decides to change the subject. “Shouldn’t we get some photos while the light's good? You said something about a speedboat…”

“Yeah, we’re doing a beach segment and then I found someone to give us a tour of the cathedral in period costume, that should be enough proof of life for my report to GBS this week."

"Sounds great!" Kon tries to look excited, even though somehow his thoughts keep going back to the simple house in Gotham.

Friday, Week One

“So like…what’s Daisy’s deal?”

Tim pauses on his way past the reading desk and raises an eyebrow.

"I'm trying to catch up in Lit," Kon says, holding up his battered used copy of The Great Gatsby. "It's not going great."

Tim must have figured out a better way to sneak Jolt into the house since Tuesday, since the thermos is back today—whatever he has in it, it smells like if a slasher movie was cast entirely with orange creamsicle ice cream bars. Even with his fix, though, he's only slightly more alert than he was the rest of the week. Kon suspects if he wasn't there reading Tim might be sleeping through his after school library volunteer hour, rather than shelving. He keeps stopping in front of the shelves and spacing out, staring vaguely at the spines. Once he dropped a pile and Kon had to help him pick it up, at normal human boy speed, of course.

Kon's tired too—with the time difference and the amount of time he spent in Spain with Tana, by the time he flew back in, changed, and caught the train south to Gotham, there was only time to straighten his hair before school. At least he got enough sun on the beach and the flight back to keep awake during class, but focusing on the book in the quiet library is a struggle.

“Daisy is like…” Tim sets the pile of books in his arms on the desk next to Kon and leans on them, resting his chin in his hands. “She gets to choose between someone with fake wealth but who has real…principles, or dreams, or whatever. And someone who’s an empty shell under all the money but guarantees all the ‘right people’ will accept her. Or something.”

“Hmm…” Kon adds a bag of money for Tom and a martini glass for Jay to the doodle chart in his notebook, in a triangle with Daisy (who he is representing with an actual daisy). “And in the end she goes with the sure thing?”

“Yeah. Sucks, right?”

Kon stares down at his notebook and shrugs. “I guess. But like, we've all got circumstances…” When he looks back up Tim is staring at him—the fluorescent lights of the library wash his face out a little, making his long lashes stand out dark around his blue eyes. "What?"

Tim blinks and shakes his head. "Nothing." He picks up the pile of books and turns back to the shelving cart. "Definitely need more coffee…"

"Is this about Math Bowl? I know you had your little strategy sesh this morning." As promised, Tim didn't mention Math Bowl to Kon at lunch, but Ives and Jen started trying to convince Hudson again. Kon ducked down in his chair, shredded one of his cheese sticks from home into smaller and smaller strings, until Hudson threw a distraction grenade. Figuratively—what he actually did was hold out an entertainment tabloid with rumors about a new Star Wars movie.

"No, uh, sorry, just spacing out…" Tim leans down to grab the thermos from the bottom of the cart

"Have you tried this new thing called sleep? They say it's more efficient than mainlining coffee."

Tim snorts around the mouthpiece of the thermos. "Now you sound like my butler."

Kelly looks over the edge of the desk, blinking behind his glasses. "Your. Your what?"

Tim sighs as he stands. "My butler. My dad says the same thing, but the butler is around more, so, by volume…"

"Dang, so you're like, rich rich." It's not like it wasn't already pretty clear Tim came from money by the way the other students talked about him and his clearly high-end clothes and tech—besides the camera Kon sometimes glimpses in his backpack he even has a chunky laptop, currently sitting on the desk opposite Kon. That would normally be a wild expense for anybody outside the Justice League—Kon has an old desktop at the house, since anything nicer would strain his normal human boy act. But a butler is like…movie rich. Great Gatsby rich, really.

"Wow, you caught me." Tim's laugh is a little thin as he sits down in front of the laptop. "Behold, Gotham's wealthiest under-eighteen." 

He slouches to tap at the keyboard, not quite meeting Kon's eyes. Having a lot of money is like having superpowers in some ways, Kon thinks. There are upsides and downsides, but what never changes is people thinking you're different. 

"I didn't mean to lie about it, I just…don't like talking about it. Or, you know, getting kidnapped for ransom." Tim raises his hands long enough to mime being in handcuffs. "That's why we didn't change my name in the school enrollment, being kidnapped seriously sucks. Unless it's Catwoman."

"I'll keep that in mind next time I need cash. Xander first, got it." Tim's laugh this time is a little more genuine, and Kon shrugs. "I don't see why we have to care about it. You're already keeping my secret, anyway. However."

Tim glances up from the screen, an eyebrow flicking up.

"Maybe you could consider covering the materials for our project?"

"Aye aye, Cap—" 

Before Tim can even finish the salute, the PA speaker buzzes from over the door.

“All students…message to all students from your principal. Due to an escape at Blackgate Prison, students will not be permitted to walk home. This is not a shelter in place order. If you cannot take the bus or your guardians are not available to pick you up, administration can help arrange car pools. Please gather in the gymnasium if you need assistance. Message to all students…message to…”

"Again?” Tim groans and drops his head against the back of the chair. “I was going to stop at the hardware store for Jolt…”

Kon's seen Blackgate, though never up close—Metro sometimes sends its gadget villains there, since without their tech they don't need the extreme security required for powered crooks. In return for the transfer agreement with the Gotham prison system, Metro helps fund supervillain resistant equipment for the GCPD, not that Lois thinks the money is going where it's supposed to (Kon is inclined to agree). Clark does the odd pass by Blackgate to keep an eye on things, which Batman seems to tolerate as long as he doesn't land, and Kon went with him a couple times, though he stopped after his first visit to Luthor in the max facility. There's only so many cages one clone wants to see in a week.

“Does this happen a lot?” Despite how serious the message sounds, Tim doesn't sound scared, and even the principal sounded more grumpy than concerned. 

“It’s not a big deal. Blackgate is on an island so usually they don’t even make the mainland. It’s just annoying, like, all this fuss and half the time it's just Kite Man, oh wow, so scary…" he rolls his eyes with sarcastic jazz hands. "Give me a break.” He taps a few commands into the laptop and scowls at the screen. “Hm, don't like that," he mutters softly. "Ugh, gotta reschedule D&D again. Are you taking the bus? If you need to call for a ride you can borrow my cell…” He fishes in his jacket pockets and comes out with an expensive looking silver flip phone.

If Blackgate hoods are on the loose, Tim could be in danger, especially if he's actually a top kidnapping target—he isn't quite sure if he was joking about that or not. It can be hard to tell with Tim. Either way, maybe Kon should try to keep an eye on him, in case somebody decides to take their shot for a quick payday.

He smiles and shrugs apologetically, trying to look as vulnerable as possible. "Um, actually, now that you mention it, I already missed my bus, and my mom is working an overnight shift at the hospice so she can't leave and she probably won't even hear about this until tomorrow, so, uh, you know, if it wasn't too much trouble, maybe…"

Tim rolls his eyes as he shuts the laptop. "The second you find out I have money you start calling in favors."

"I'll stock my locker with Jolt for you."

"Forget everything I just said, we have a deal."

Ten minutes later they're sitting on the steps of the parking lot, waiting for Tim's ride. Tim has his coat zipped up around his hoodie and a knit hat pulled down over his hair. Kon slides his own coat on so he doesn't look too immune to the weather. Maybe he should get some scarves next.

"So," Tim says, "any more thoughts on the project?"

Kon stares absently across the lot towards the next block, where a strangely gothic gate opens on the Wayne Community Recreation Center. "Whatever we're doing, it definitely needs some of those twisty fences."

"Hm, yeah. Maybe we could make a tower or something."

"Dragons, dragons are cool."

"Dragons definitely are cool."

“Maybe like…there’s a dragon and a tower, but you can’t tell if the dragon is protecting what’s inside the tower, or protecting what’s outside in case it gets out.”

Tim takes a drink from the thermos, his eyebrows drawing together as he concentrates. “Yeah, that’s a thought.”

In the next silence, Kon can hear the sound of a car approaching: a very expensive car from the rich purr of the engine. Kon waits until he's sure the sound is close enough for a human with moderately good hearing to notice it. "Huh, somebody has a nice car."

Tim slams fully alert. It's all Kon can do not to jump at the startled heartbeats, but he's back to normal only seconds later. Everybody in Gotham has kind of twitchy reflexes—probably comes naturally when you're in the same town as the Joker—but Tim is on another level. "Oh my god," he says softly, staring at the sleek sky-blue sports car pulling into the lot, "it's not the butler…"

‘...I’m a bitch,
I’m a lover,
I’m a child,
I’m a mother…’

Tim puts his face in his hands. “I thought he was still gone…”

Kon looks between him and the car. "Um, what…"

Tim sighs and waves a hand towards the car as it pulls up to the curb in front of the steps. "My brother," he says. "He exists to torment me, apparently."

Tim’s brother turns the stereo off, cuts the engine, and rolls down the window. “Heard somebody needed a lift?"

Tim grabs his backpack and heads down the steps, Kon following behind him. "What are you doing here?"

It sounds like an accusation. It sounds worried. It sounds relieved. Kon isn't sure what to make of it.

Tim's brother tosses back dark shoulder-length hair and pushes his sunglasses up to hold it in place. "I'm here being a dutiful older sibling? You wound me, Tim." He glances past him at Kon and waves with a cheery smile. He has blue eyes, like Tim—apart from the clash in personalities, Kon would have assumed they were natural siblings if he didn’t already know Tim was adopted. "Hello, Tim's friend."

"Right, Kelly, Dick. Dick, Kelly."

"Tim I’m getting the picture that he annoys you and all but isn't that a little—"

"It's his name."

"...oh."

Dick turns and coughs into his sleeve, then nods to the passenger door. “It’s not locked. Alfred’s putting dinner on, I don't want it to get cold without us, let’s go.”

Kon squeezes through the gap into the tiny back seat and Tim settles in the passenger seat, slamming the door and buckling his seatbelt with what Kon feels is a little more force than strictly necessary. He folds his arms and shoots a sharp look at Dick. “I thought you left after the—skiing accident. From winter vacation."

Dick laughs as he puts the car in reverse. "Please, as if you're getting rid of me that easily."

Kon must have made a confused face—more because Tim jolted again than because of what Dick was saying—because Dick glances in the backseat mirror and winks. "He's trying to murder me for the inheritance," he explains cheerfully, reaching across to ruffle Tim's hair.

"I am nooooot," Tim groans, sliding down in his seat and clutching at his backpack. "I have my own inheritance, I don't want yours." 

"You can say that all you want, I know you're jealous of my circus.” Dick pats his shoulder appeasingly. “Look, you can try again in the summer. Dad's talking about Barbados, you can like, drown me or whatever, we’ll have fun."

"If I was actually trying to do it I'd only need one attempt," Tim grumbles under his breath. "And I don't care about your circus, oh my god, enough about the circus—"

"I think circuses are cool," Kon blurts out. Both of them stare at him in the mirror. "Uh, like, as long as they're…run ethically?"

"Don't encourage him…" Tim groans..

Dick beams into the mirror. "You know I’ve always been saying you should try to make more friends at school, Tim!”

Tim rolls his eyes, then grabs the thermos out of the door’s side cupholder and takes a long drink. Then he glances around the seat at Kon and grins. “Want some?” he says in a fake-sweet tone, pushing the thermos into Dick’s face.

Dick pulls a disgusted face, almost twisting the steering wheel into the curb as he pushes Tim’s hand away with his other hand. “See!” He turns fully around on the seat to look at Kon, waving at Tim’s innocent expression. “I have a witness!”

Kon winces and clutches his backpack. “He’s not gonna need to murder you if you don’t watch the road, dude!”

“Oh shit—” Dick turns around and merges into the road, the stick shift grating between gears as a few minivans honk at him.

“This is why Dad doesn’t like it when you drive his car,” Tim says.

“‘Thank you, Dick, I so appreciate you picking me up from school in your sweet ride, Dick, you’re my favorite brother, Dick,’” Dick mutters under his breath as he brakes at the first light. “Kelly, where did you say you lived, kiddo?”

Kon almost gives them an address further away in a slightly nicer neighborhood, just so he wouldn't have to see their reactions to the shabby house. But he doesn't want to turn into someone else who acts different to Tim, not while Tim still hasn’t given any sign he’d treat him differently if he thought he was poor. (Not that Kon is actually hurting for money at all, but the house sure makes it look that way.)

Dick's eyebrows go up as he pulls up to the curb, taking in the overgrown lawn, tattered wood siding, and torn window curtains, but neither of them say anything. The silence communicates plenty, though.

"We're working on it," Kon says defensively.

"Hey, it's standing, so it's ahead of my place in Bludhaven," Dick says with a laugh.

"Sure you're okay by yourself?" Tim asks through the window as Kon gets out. “If there’s somebody you can stay with we can drop you anywhere.”

“Oh yeah, I’m delighted to volunteer.” Dick sighs, but he doesn’t actually sound that frustrated.

Kon feels better going with them partway, and especially now that he’s made sure Tim actually left instead of lingering at school making himself a target, but he still wants them out of the city or in whatever safe gated community they live in as soon as possible. “I’ll be okay,” he says. “If my mom hears about it she might call the house and she’ll freak if I’m not here. You guys stay safe.”

“We’ll try our best,” Dick says, all wide-eyed concern. “We’re about to take part in one of the most hazardous activities in Gotham.”

“Wh—”

“Watching hockey with our butler. Stop shoving that thermos at me, Tim! Geez! Okay see you!”

The fight starts about four hours after Dick pulls away from the house.

Kon’s floating against the flaking ceiling of the basement, listening vaguely for Robin’s music playlist and trying to decide where to get started on the junk completely covering the floor, when he hears the first explosion at the docks. He doesn't need superhearing for it—it's so loud the windows on the ground floor quiver.

“What the—oh whoops.” He brushes plaster flakes off his hair, takes a quick look to make sure he didn’t crack anything structural when he jumped, and runs into the living room to turn on the news.

"...explosive escalation of the gang war between Gotham and Bludhaven following the escape of three top Bludhaven gang lieutenants from Blackgate this afternoon. With the vigilante calling himself Batman reported on the scene as well, further violence can be expected. Gotham police advises citizens to stay in their homes unless absolutely necessary and to avoid the dock areas, waterfront…"

The footage of the burning container ship is grainy and badly lit, the news helicopter pitching in the high wind coming off the harbor to whip up the flames. Two groups of gunmen are shooting at each other from opposite ends of the ship, and from the searing light trails that white out the frame every few seconds, they're toting Metro level heat.

"...worst incident since January," the announcer in the helicopter says breathlessly, "continuing to prove that Gotham's vigilantes are only inviting—there, there look, it's Batman! Get him in the shot, Jeff, what are we paying you—as you can see, the vigilantes are on the scene…"

A figure in a dark cape crouches on the roof of the pilot house, nearly concealed by the dark and the tarred surface, but gunfire from one end of the ship concentrates on his position as the camera focuses. He flips away towards the rail, and for a moment the yellow lining of the cape flashes bright in the firelight.

"...not Batman." The announcer is too professional to sigh, but Kon knows the business well enough to tell she can see her ratings dropping. The Gotham capes might not be as well-liked by the public, but the news is still finding ways to profit.

Kon mutes the TV and just watches the action. Nightwing lands a few moments later, gliding from the bridge to drop in the middle of the group shooting at Robin the most, and within thirty seconds half of them are down. One gets bold enough to make a grab for Nightwing's whipping ponytail, and even in the grainy aerial footage Nightwing's bright grin is clear as he whips around to swing a kick into the man's head.

Despite that, the situation looks rough. Once the rival gang on the other end of the ship realize they're dealing with Bats on top of their enemies, they charge in, focusing their fire on Robin and Nightwing. Soon both of them are surrounded in front of the pilot house, until one of the powerful Metro blasters catches a lucky shot—Nightwing tackles Robin to the deck as the small shelter explodes.

After that, there's so much smoke and confused movement that it's almost impossible to see what's going on. Kon stretches his hearing towards the harbor, ignoring the propellers of the news helicopter and the announcer's chatter as he searches for Robin and Nightwing's voices under the gunfire.

The first thing he hears is Robin coughing, a rough rasp in his throat as he fights in a breath. At least nothing sounds broken and Kon can't hear blood coming up or the ominous fluttery noise of a punctured lung. 

How does he do this every night? No wonder he sounded stressed on the phone. Kon wishes 'Terry' had said something, instead of brushing him off. He gets that the hero business is dangerous, he doesn't need to be shielded from it.

Even if it hurts to listen to Robin gasping. 

"Thanks."

"Don't mention it." Nightwing sounds less playful than usual. "Up and at 'em."

Neither of them say anything for several seconds. Kon hears more shots and a searing whine that must be one of the blasters.

"Nightwing, on your six, on your six, dammit watch your back—"

An electronic zapping sound accompanies a burst of blue light on the TV screen. "I had him, see, I'm fine! I'm not made of glass, New Years was months ago!"

Robin snaps back with a frustrated sigh as he punches another gangster. "New Years was seven weeks ago—"

Whatever they're arguing about, they break off as another burst of fire interrupts.

"Hey, B, do you have an ETA yet?" 

Unlike Robin's music earpiece, the Bats' work radios have some kind of hypersonic scrambler, so Kon can't hear Batman's reply to Nightwing. If he tries hard enough, he could get through it, but it stings to try and he can't find a way to excuse it to himself the way he can by listening to their voices. He just wants to make sure they're okay, not spy on everything they do. 

"Cool, cool cool cool, yeah, we're good here—" Kon really wouldn't define the situation as 'good', but maybe the frame of reference for Bats is skewed. "Robin, I'm gonna toss you, boost on three, hit a line on the comm tower, one, two…"

Robin flips above the smoke covering the deck, firing a grapple as he hits the peak of the jump and swinging in a long curve over the deck. This makes him clearly visible on the TV footage again, but the gang can see him too, and Kon's breath catches as he sees a shotgun blast rip holes through the bright yellow lining of the cape.

Before Kon can think, he's floating near the ceiling, the backpack holding his suit clutched in his arms. They need help—

He forces himself to stop. Batman is on his way—Kon plunging in might only make things worse. The gang members already have weapons that are overkill for Gotham. Kon giving them a reason to look for more firepower will only put Robin at more risk next time.

He keeps watching the screen, holding the backpack tighter and tighter.

Robin doesn't seem to care about the danger—he lets out an excited yell as he throws a handful of flashbangs and gas pellets into the smoke at the bow end of the ship, and from the dismayed yells he had pretty good aim. As he finishes his circle around the ship's communication tower, he lets go and dives into the smoke at the other end of the ship, Nightwing taking a flip off a pile of barrels to join him.

A screaming volley of the white-light blasters welcomes them, but under the noise is the rumble of a heavy distant engine.

"Oh, look who finally finished getting his eyeliner on." Even if Kon's not actually trying to make out the words under the scrambler, the responding buzz in Nightwing's ear somehow sounds distinctly annoyed. "No, I totally know you redesigned the cowl, B, yes—" He breaks off for a moment, and from the sound Kon guesses he just kicked someone in the chest. "—I'm never letting it go."

"Nightwing, behi—"

"I know!"

The camera in the helicopter swings out to the water, picking out a vague dark shape that suddenly rockets out of the water, a low-slung speedboat blasting up on flame-sputtering turbos before shifting in midair to become a bulky quad ATV. It seems to hang upside-down for a moment, then flips and drops towards the deck of the ship from ten meters up.

"Brace!" Batman snarls just before impact.

The whole container ship dips, the stern plunging in a steep angle towards the water then rocking back as the gangsters yell and scramble for their footing, nearly all of them dropping their weapons in order to grab a handhold. Almost all of the smoke is blown away by the shockwave, and the helicopter jerks in the air, the camera swinging wildly as Batman leaps from the seat to the deck.

After that it's all over within another two minutes. Once Batman storms the ship, both Robin and Nightwing's breathing becomes less tense, although they seem to be hiding their relief. "Can you believe him swiping our win like that?" Nightwing tosses over his shoulder to Robin as they perch on the ATV to watch. "Might as well score a few more points…"

Taking a running start, Nightwing puts a gloved hand lightly on Batman's shoulder plate and vaults over him to knock out a gangster who managed to hold onto his gun. Batman follows up by swinging a kick over Nightwing's head as he drops into a crouch.

"Save me some!" Robin fires his grapple and swings after him just as the last gangster drops with a punch from Batman. "Or not…"

As Nightwing rolls to his feet Batman puts a hand at the small of his back, but Nightwing quickly  turns and pushes it away. "I'm fine, okay?"

"Nightwing, he's just—"

Nightwing sighs. "Sure, I get it...Can we clean up? It's freezing out here."

They keep talking, but after that it starts to feel a little too much like spying, since Kon can't use the excuse of telling himself he's just making sure they're safe. He backs the superhearing down until all he hears is the faint sound of sirens in the distance as police cars head towards the docks

He's met Nightwing and Batman before, of course—even if he usually tries to avoid Batman, not that he's scared or anything he's just…yeah so he's scared, okay, he figures he has a right to as the son of a supervillain trying to date the man's junior partner. 

But this is the first time he's seen the three of them working together. For all Batman's intimidating public image, and the danger of the situation, the way they interacted was strangely warm. Even if they were a little annoyed with each other for some reason, they still acted with complete trust and synchronization, the kind of instant attunement that comes from working together for years. The kind of understanding Kon wishes he had with Clark, but doesn't know how to build.

As he reaches for the remote to turn off the TV, all three Bats are climbing into their ATV Transformer, Robin draping himself across two-thirds of the backseat and putting his tongue out playfully as Nightwing tries to nudge him for more room.

Sunday, Week One

By the weekend, the living room is, well, fit for living again, and the basement is starting to look like a room and not a dumpster. After his homework for the week is taken care of (he doesn't think his essay outline resembles either thing very much, but after seven hours he never wants to see the name Daisy again, so the teacher will just have to deal), Kon decides to move on to the next step of his renovation project and repaint the kitchen.

The hardware store is a quick bus ride away, near a large mall in a middle class section of Gotham—he could walk, easy, but a normal human probably wouldn't hike seven miles carrying heavy painting equipment, so the bus it is.

"This your first time riding a bus, kid?" the bus driver sighs as he struggles to get the fare out.

Normal human boy joke time. "Yeah, I just got off the flying saucer," Kon says with his friendliest please-consider-me-for-your-next-advertising-campaign pitch session smile.

She actually smiles back a little as some of the annoyance fades. "Enjoy your stay, Alf, just get a monthly pass or something and save time for everybody."

"Live long and may the force prosper with you," Kon calls over his shoulder as he jumps down from the bus.

Compared to everything in Gotham so far, the hardware store smells amazing. Kon spends almost twenty minutes wandering around sniffing the fresh-cut lumber before he realizes a manager is giving him weird looks and heads towards the paint section.

Soon he's kneeling in front of a row of low-set tubs of brushes, wondering what the differences are and which ones he needs.

Might as well start with one of each, he decides, dropping a handful in his basket.

"Whoa, watch out—"

Something lands softly on Kon's head and bounces to the floor. It takes a few seconds for the weight to register—it definitely would not have landed softly on a normal human boy. "Ouch," he says with as much fervor as he can, putting a hand on his hair and turning to see what fell.

Luckily he sees the blond girl crouching behind before they can fully collide with each other, because he probably would have given her a concussion.

"Oh my gosh I am so sorry," says the girl, clutching a dented nail-gun box. "That sounded so bad, are you okay? You need ice?"

Kon stands up slowly and tries to guess what expression he should be going for by size of both the dent in the box and the worried look on her face. He settles on a slightly less profanity-filled imitation of Lois hitting her head while trying to fix her sink. "Ow, no, I'm…fine. Mostly. Geez, ow." 

That's probably enough, right? Normal human boy, check, not actively dying, check, definitely felt it, check. Mission accomplished.

After gathering brushes and painters tape, the next step is the actual paint. Yellow might be a good shade for the kitchen—Kon hates plain walls, since they remind him far too much of the drab beige aisles of the secret levels and the clinically clean white labs. Tana's friend didn't make any special orders, so she's getting yellow with white trim, and maybe a strip of patterned wallpaper around the top, like the Kents' warm little farmhouse.

The girl follows him into the paint aisle. Mission not so accomplished. 

Kon tries to find an expression that says he is a normal human boy who is still definitely in a plausible level of pain after having a nail gun fall on his head and who is also finding the difference between Daisy and Dandelion paint chips the most fascinating thing in the world. He definitely does not nail it.

And where's Robin to complain about terrible puns when you need him?

"You sure you're okay?" The girl picks up his basket off the floor and follows him along the aisle. "Cause, like, if you're about to collapse I don't want it to be a hit and run, you know? I'd feel like a jerk."

"Thanks, but I'll be fine in a few minutes, seriously." 

Kon tries to take the basket but she holds it behind her back. "At least let me carry your stuff to make it up to you."

A normal human boy would definitely not be working quite this hard to lose a cute girl trying to do him a favor, Kon decides. And listen, he may or may not be taken at the moment but she's definitely cute either way, even in her baggy Green Lantern hoodie and sweats. He shrugs and drops his handful of paint chips on top of the tape and brushes. "Fine, you win."

She beams. "My undefeated streak continues! I'm Steph, by the way."

Kon holds out a hand before realizing hers are full, and quickly shifts it into a two-finger salute as she wiggles one of the baskets in response. "I'm Kelly, I just moved here."

"Gosh, I'd never guess."

Everyone's been saying this all week, even the school lunch lady. Kon supposes he ought to be annoyed by it, but 'kid from the next town over' is such a normal way of being weird that instead it just makes him feel warm, like the time the antique store owner thought he just didn't have any fashion sense. Also, considering everyone in Gotham is completely nuts (yes, Robin included, nobody who thought rationally would have decided 'hey, let's try a second date with the guy who just helped abduct me and, oh yeah, also has laser eyes', and that was even before he got out the platform boots), being seen as weird by them probably means he's getting somewhere on the normal human boy front. The weirdness cancels out.

Still, he doesn't want to stay the focus of this conversation. "What's all that for?" Kon asks, pointing at Steph's basket.

She blinks and looks down. The basket is overflowing with skeins of paracord, black and purple carabiners, black duct tape, several large silver hooks, and a double-size box of Junior Mints. The dented nail gun box sits delicately on top of the pile. "Oh, oh this? It is, uh. Macrame. Extreme...macrame. All the girls are toooootally into it this year, ask anybody."

Maybe Metropolis girls have different hobbies—one of the girls Angela represents for commercials knits lace socks between takes, but Kon's never seen this before. "Extreme macrame," he repeats, tilting his head a little.

"Yeah, you know, like macrame but…more. Macramore. Yeah." She giggles. "So what are you doing that looks so interesting actually let's talk about that now."

So much for not being the subject of this conversation. "I'm working on repainting the kitchen," Kon says. "Mom's too busy but the place is kind of a wreck." He can decide the wall color later, he decides, dropping a few more sample chips in the basket and picking a can of white for the windows and trim. "That should do it. Thanks for the help, but I've got to check out…"

Steph hands the basket back. "Don't die on me."

"I'll try. You too?"

She laughs. "I'll do my best!"

Chapter Text

The cracked pleather seats of the bus squeak under his jeans as Kon squishes further into the corner of the back seat, where he’d hoped the noise level wouldn’t affect him as badly. This prediction was not correct: he winces with each stab to his sensitive hearing as the class keeps yelling back and forth at each other from the seats in front.

"Huntress!"

"Batgirl!"

"Huntress!"

"Batgirl!"

"Starfire!"

"She doesn't even go here!"

"Children, please—"

"Yeah she does, she and Nightwing were totally doing it!"

"Clarissa! Not appropriate!"

"Harley—"

"Shut up, Jared!"

Kon looks down as he hears Tim's heartbeat shift. He fell asleep practically as soon as the bus started moving and stayed that way, not even stirring when Ives climbed over him to sit next to Jen. Slowly, he slid further and further over against the seat until he ended up where he is now, draped half over his backpack and half over Kon's arm with his dark hair fluttering a little as he breathes.

Now, he blinks a few times and raises his head an inch. "Wha…"

"Good afternoon," Kon says.

They stare at each other for a moment, then Tim's blue eyes fly wide. "Cripes, I am so sorry—" Tim pushes himself up and rubs his eyes, sighing. "Please, please tell me I didn't drool on you." A few marks from Kon’s ribbed sweater sleeve color his cheek—for a moment, Kon thinks the prolonged contact with something invulnerable has hurt him somehow, before remembering that's a normal human thing.

"No water damage," Kon assures him, pressing a little further into the corner so his shoulder isn't touching Tim's. "Late night?"

Tim nods with his face in his hands. "Now that Dick's in town he wants to spend 'quality time' together…dragged me to the mall for a midnight movie…had to evacuate when Clayface attacked…"

This probably explains why Tim was actually rushing to finish assignments during homeroom, rather than arriving with everything already complete and impeccably organized. After putting the last period on his take-home history quiz he promptly slept through all the morning classes, most of lunch, and barely woke up long enough to get on the bus to the art museum for the field trip taking up the rest of the afternoon. 

Kon remembers hearing Robin's playlist from the direction of the mall last night—it was a good thing he and Nightwing were on the scene. With Tim so tired and spacey lately when he isn't laser-focused on annoying his playfully ditzy brother, Tim and Dick could both have wandered into the line of fire and been seriously hurt in the attack if the Bats hadn't put a quick stop to it.

"Batgirl!"

"Huntress!"

"Quiet! Please!"

Tim glances around the bus as the shouting erupts again, then turns to Kon with raised eyebrows. "What did I miss?"

"Uh…I think they're arguing about who's hotter? I wasn't paying attention when it started." Kon was far more focused on the sounds of Tim's steady heartbeat and soft breathing. Normally being hemmed in for so long would stress him out, but there was something calming about Tim's slight weight against his side. Now that it's gone he misses it a little.

"Oh my god."

"Ugh, right?" Jen groans from the other end of the bench, pulling her black hoodie further over her face. "The right answer is so obviously Huntress, I can't believe they're even arguing about it."

Tim stares at her blankly as he unzips his backpack and grabs a can of Jolt without looking.

Kon snatches it out of his hand before he can hit himself in the face with it. "Tim, I think that will work better if you open it first—who's Huntress? I never heard of her before we moved." 

Not all the Gotham capes are authorized for Justice League team ops and group events, so usually it's only Batman and his core partners who ever appear outside the city. Kon knows vaguely that there are more, but Robin doesn't talk about his main associates very much, let alone the outside contractors. Every once in a while Kon will see another dark shape in distant news footage, but that's about all he knows from watching the Metro news. He doesn't even know how many vigilantes claim Gotham as their territory in all.

Kon pops the tab—very carefully, because even if he has a running joke with Robin and the annoyed faces he makes when the spray hits him are totally cute, he can't do that to someone who doesn't know—and hands the can back to Tim. "There you go."

"Not doing this to myself without caffeine," Tim mumbles, then sighs blissfully as he takes a sip.

"Huntress is only a goth legend, Kelly!" Jen reaches into her backpack for a three-ring binder and opens it to the inside of the back cover, where she's taped a huge tabloid photo of a masked woman in a purple-and-black leather costume, caught by a telephoto lens while posing on top of a stone facade. "Look at her! The jewel tones! The cross! The hair! She's perfect!"

Tim stares. "You just carry that around?"

"Duh, how am I going to get her to autograph it if I don't have it with me? Get with the program, Tim."

"Yeah…" Tim sighs vaguely into the can. "Program…getting with it…"

"I don't know, I like Batgirl…" Hudson turns around and leans over the back of the seat in front of them. "Not like-like, obviously. I just think she's cool. I wish she'd come back, when was the last time anybody saw her?"

Ives taps the frame of his glasses thoughtfully. "Summer? Autumn? Wasn't she kind of with Nightwing, maybe they broke up and she quit."

"A woman has a right to make her own decisions without a man, Ives! Geez!"

Kon can hear Tim's heartbeat starting to speed up, the aluminum of the can warping under his hands. Which is weird, but this whole conversation is weird, and now their friends are yelling at each other.

"I didn't mean it like that, Jen, just maybe she wanted to strike out on her own?"

"We're here! Everyone behave, for the love of Rembrandt!" Ms. Fradon stands up and shouts down the aisle of the bus. "Looking at you, Jared and Xander!"

"Couldn't happen soon enough," Tim mutters, then chugs the rest of the Jolt and shoves the empty can in his backpack. "Let's go, partner."

The Gotham Museum of Art is located in the picturesque mountains east of the city, housed in a grandly decrepit mansion donated to the city by some local industrialist: a large bronze plaque over the door reads 'a token of the Cobblepot family's esteem for the City of Gotham, 1965'. The stone facing was probably white, once, but after a century of soot and weather it stands out as a heap of dark spikes against the sky.

"Cheerful place," Kon remarks as the class troops inside. After he steps through the doors he pauses for a moment and turns slowly in place, staring at the dark marble tile and the twisted bronze bird sculptures lining the walls.

"Sure,” Tim agrees with a yawn, though he’s so sleepy he’d probably agree to anything Kon said at the moment. “Cozy.”

Ms. Fradon hands out clipboards to each team at the door, then waves towards the stairs. "Enjoy yourselves! Two hours to complete the assignment, I'm going to have a talk with the curator about why they've never had a feature exhibition on local women artists. We'll meet up in the special exhibition hall at the end of your time, alright, let's go people!"

She strides purposefully away—Kon would not like to be that curator right now. The three parent chaperones cluster by a rack of pamphlets to chat about what they're bringing to the spring PTA potluck, and the students start slowly pairing up and drifting towards different exhibit halls. Jen and Clarissa glare daggers at each other as they play tug-of-war with their clipboard.

"So do you want to fill in our scavenger hunt sheet, or shall I?" Kon asks, looking down at the list of clues next to blanks meant for doodles of artworks that filled the description.

Tim looks over at him and blinks. "Huh?"

"Okay, I'm taking that as you nominating me." Kon fishes in his pockets for a pen and nudges Tim towards the stairs. "First clue…’After victory but before the angels’. Mean anything to you?"

Kon can practically feel Tim coming more awake as he reads the clue, and almost before he finishes the sentence Tim is headed across the lobby. "Pre-Raphaelite. Hall F, third floor."

"How did you—"

"It's not rocket science. Raphael’s the angel, the movement happened after Victoria became Queen of England. Please, I could do puzzles like this in my sleep." 

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what you are doing."

“‘S a matter of perspective…” Tim pauses to stretch for a moment, then breaks into a jog as he reaches the stairs, humming half under his breath. "...Harp and carp, come along with me, Thomas the Rhymer…"

"What the...I'm coming, Tim, wait up!" By the time Kon slings his backpack off one arm to shove the clipboard inside, Tim is far enough ahead he has to run after him. He barely catches up at his normal human speed before Tim rounds a corner and disappears.

If it wasn't for Tim leading him, Kon would have been immediately lost. The building is a maze of narrow steep staircases swirling different directions, with no hint if they're leading to a giant hall lined with stained glass or a room full of 18th-century china barely larger than a cupboard. Yet Tim seems to know the place like the back of his hand, even the sculpture nooks in the dead-end corridors created when the museum was refitted with elevators.

Something about the puzzles seems to have flipped a switch in Tim as he snaps off answer after answer. His heartbeat is elevated, although still not abnormal for a human. Though now that he thinks about it Kon's range of comparison might be skewed since his human friends like Lois and Robin, or even Clark's friend Jimmy, are often highly stressed around him. Cue surprise. But it's way above what Kon would normally expect from someone who just slept through a forty-minute bus ride.

“There, done,” Tim says, handing back the clipboard.

Kon stares at the completed puzzle, a lengthy number cipher that took Tim a whopping minute and a half after he yanked the clipboard out of Kon’s hands. "How are you this good at puzzles? You were a zombie like fifteen minutes ago!"

Tim takes a quick look around for guards before taking another drink of Jolt (he's now on his third can, which…might explain the elevated heart rate, actually). "Oh, yeah, uh…Jeopardy. Every night. Have to be quick so Dick doesn't think he's smarter than me."

Kon considers for a second, then shrugs. "Oh yeah that makes sense." 

Lois is a faithful viewer, though Kon rarely watched while he was staying with her, since that was prime after-dinner video game time. But he could always hear her from the living room, yelling at the contestants for messing up clues. She always gets really competitive with Clark when he came over, too, at least until they inevitably start making out on the couch. 

One of the few times Kon joined them (watching for his cue to leave them to it the whole time) she got so excited she overturned an entire bowl of popcorn, and Clark was so focused on getting ahead of her that he forgot he had superspeed he could have used to duck.

"Next one?" Kon looks at the clue.

"Netherlands."

"I didn't even read it out…"

"I saw the question."

"Upside down! For three seconds!"

"I think we passed some Dutch Masters two halls over, come on."

Once they find a wall of Vermeers, Tim stares over Kon's shoulder as he sketches one in the box. "Wow, good eye," he says. "You could get away with stick figures if you wanted to."

"No point not doing it right," Kon says, glaring at some stubborn shading. It's frustrating being able to picture something so clearly and not produce it on the paper the way he wants to. "You sure know your stuff."

Tim shrugs—not that Kon can see him where he's standing, but he can hear the slight shift of his backpack against his jacket. "It's not really my thing, I like photography more, but we have an okay collection at the house. Okay, next?"

With Tim's caffeine-boosted puzzle speedrun skills, they finish the worksheet within forty minutes, most of the time spent doing the accompanying drawings to prove they actually found art pieces to fill the requirements.

After that, they just wander the museum, Tim occasionally pointing out pieces by local artists or mentioning other trivia. Apparently the museum is a popular target for thieves, since they often make the erroneous assumption that it's too far out of Batman's way for him to notice in time to react. 

Instead, it generally turns into a Castlevania boss level, since creepy mansions are exactly the kind of environment you'd expect a Bat to feel right at home. And then Metro buys the security footage for tacky documentaries like the one that had Kon convinced Batman was a literal vampire for several months after he was launched.

"Of course, some people are more successful than others," Tim says over his shoulder as he turns a corner. Kon hurries so he doesn't lose him because his x-ray doesn't agree with the tangle of ancient wiring and lead pipes inside the walls and he might not find him again. "Catwoman nabbed some pieces last year that turned out to be looted from Vietnam so the museum's not really desperate to get them back now that they're with the rightful owners. Oh, that's nice…"

Tim tilts his head to one side as they pass a small bronze angel, forming a viewfinder frame with his hands, then pokes Kon's arm. "Cover me," he whispers, then takes a camera out of his backpack, aiming it past the angel to catch a Gotham cityscape on the wall in the background.

Kon listens for a second. "I think there's someone coming up the stairs but you've got time if you hurry…"

"This light is really good," Tim hisses back. “Can't rush art.”

"You'd better figure out how really fast."

"We donate, they can't get me in that much trouble."

Kon presses a hand to his forehead, waving the clipboard for emphasis even though Tim isn't looking his way at all. "I don't donate!"

"Shit, right—" 

The shutter clicks and Tim slips the camera back in his bag in almost the same movement. By the time a guard comes into view on the stairs, Tim and Kon are totally engrossed in the clipboard they're holding up to hide their faces, trying not to start laughing.

“Phew, we survived,” Kon says, then takes a quick step back as he realizes just how close they are.

"Should have thought that one through," Tim says with a regretful wince and shrug after the guard is out of earshot. He holds up a finger as if about to make a point, then stares at it vaguely for a moment, the corners of his eyes crinkling a little. Kon can practically see his eyes shifting shape as his focus goes in and out, crashing from whatever puzzle or caffeine boost he was riding on through the assignment. "I…am possibly very tired."

“That’s a good working deduction,” Kon agrees.

Tim nods vigorously, putting a hand on Kon’s shoulder and leaning in like he wants to reveal a deep secret. He has to stretch onto his toes a little to get the right angle. “See, that’s the thing, I’m like. The best at deductions.” Kon feels his face heating up as Tim stares up at him with strange distant intensity. Hopefully the light is too dim for Tim to notice. 

“I can see that.”

“In…in the world.” Tim gestures grandly, then flails as his backpack nearly falls off. “Shit!”

“Whoa, careful!” Kon takes a step to the side to block the gap in the railing leading to the stairs in case Tim trips. “Geez, listen, can you deduce the last time you slept for more than three hours?” Lois claims she needs five to ‘stay human’ but from the pained faces Clark makes every time she says something about a late night, Kon is pretty sure the standard for non-journalist humans is considerably higher.

Tim shrugs and makes a faint ‘eh’ noise as he adjusts his backpack. Kon takes this to mean that it’s been decidedly a while. “Okay, let’s get to that special exhibit so you can at least sit down and maybe not pass out before we head back to the bus.” He flips pages on the clipboard until he finds the map of the museum and squints at it. “Come on, I think it’s this way.”

“Okay…” Tim yawns and fishes in his backpack for another can of Jolt.

Kon rolls his eyes. “You have really got to stop playing video games all night, dude. Caffeine won’t fix all your problems.”

“Doubtful,” Tim sighs behind him. “But I’ll take it under consideration.”

Even with Kon’s x-ray vision on the blink and Tim half-asleep, they find their way to the special exhibition hall somehow, and still half an hour before the field trip ends. 

Kon stretches his hearing a little and, while it feels…sticky, in a way, trying to push his powers through the lead-riddled walls of the building and Gotham’s general Gothamy-ness, he does catch Ms. Fradon in the middle of her attack, sorry, polite persuasion, on the curator. (“Gotham Women’s Historical Society has provided volunteer docents, who make their own costumes on their own time, and still not once—”) She’s probably not headed their way anytime soon.

“Here we are,” Kon says, looking at the heavy carved doors of the special exhibition hall. 

The etched-mirror sign reads Monsters: Reflection or Redemption?, whatever that means. 

Kon can hear voices inside without needing to push his hearing, so they’re not the first of the school group to make it there. He puts a hand behind Tim’s elbow, hovering with just enough pressure to guide him in the right direction. He’s already broken three dishes at the house, before he got smart and bought paper plates instead: he doesn't like thinking about what might happen if he got distracted after grabbing a human.

“Alright, let’s just find you a bench, and—”

Kon opens the door and freezes.

The special exhibition is housed in the brightest and most modern room in the museum, the floor and walls lined with white tile until it runs into the swirling cast-iron railing of the balcony overlooking the second-floor library. White display cases house weapons, art, and explanatory graphics covering human’s tendency to invent monsters to represent their own fears as something tangible enough to be warded off, or at least comprehended.

Kon takes this in out of his peripheral vision, his heartbeat sounding loud in his ears, loud enough to drown out everything else.

Under the domed ceiling of the center of the exhibition space, a half-dozen other students and one of the chaperones are clustered in front of a large glass globe. A globe filled with pale green smoke, shifting slowly against the walls of its container.

All Kon can do is stare at it, his breath catching as he remembers Luthor and all his threats, how long he spent living in fear, how his early attempts to escape only made everything worse… 

(How did he find me here? I was so careful—)

—after the first few seconds of cold shock, the panic fades enough that he can slowly realize it’s not actually Kryptonite, what with him not collapsing to the floor coughing up blood onto the pristine white tile. Always pays to appreciate the little things in life, like your organs not melting. 

It’s something different, some home-grown Gotham nonsense. Or maybe just some freakin' weird art.

Being realistic, even in a city as crazy as Gotham they wouldn’t have honest-to-heck Kryptonite just laying around like that. Kon repeats it to himself a few times, but his heart is still beating fast. Even if his brain might be able to logic through it, his instincts are having none of that.

He's just…never been thrilled to see weird green smoke. Or glass tubes. Especially glass tubes—

(Tapping sounds like pulses through the fluid. "Awake in there?"

"Quit messing around, you know it's not…"

"Its eyes are open?"

"Reflex.” Bright light. It hurts. “Well, at least its optic nerve seems to be working so I guess we'll keep this one. Mark it down."

"'kay. Mind if I turn the radio up? Something's screaming in the next lab.")

—so, yeah, in general he could not really be called a fan of glass tubes.

"Kelly?"

Kon glances over and sees Tim staring at him, his eyes a little clearer now and vaguely concerned. Tim’s heart rate is going up again as well, probably less because of the green smoke than because Xander and Jared are part of the group already in the exhibition room. Or maybe since Kon is doing such a great job of being normal right now, really stellar, it’s starting to freak him out. 

Kon quickly gives a double thumbs-up and tries to look like a normal human boy who is absolutely not dragging himself back from the brink of a panic attack. “Uh…I’m good, just…I’m gonna, um. Go wait over there, okay?”

Tim blinks slowly. “Uh…’kay…?”
 
Kon does not run to the other side of the special exhibit to hide between the wall and a case of Japanese woodblock prints. He just…walks very fast. And the prints are very interesting. The case completely blocking his view of the front of the room is just coincidence.

So normal.

Tim doesn't follow Kon. The last glimpse Kon has as he turns is Tim staring at the smoke filled glass in a dazed, fascinated way.

Kon tries to focus on the prints—mostly of mythical monsters and ghost stories, the eeriness of the content contrasting with the delicate lines and careful color work. But he can't turn his hearing down enough to miss what's going on at the front of the room, and he can feel himself tensing a little every time something reminds him what's over there.

"The Sight of Fear," Hudson says. He must be reading the label on the display. "G. Perez, 1989. The heck?"

"Maybe it's some kind of secret meaning," Ives says. "Like another puzzle…Is that a guillotine inside?"

“That’s so messed up, bro.”

"Like some D&D shit."

"Yeah, actually, for our next campaign…"

Kon takes a deep breath and tries to focus harder on the woodprints. Too bad it isn't business hours for the Bats right now because he could really use Robin's radio as a distraction. If he concentrates on the tiny whine coming off the lights inside the woodprint display, he can almost wipe out what's happening in the rest of the room. Not enough to not hear it at all, but it turns vague and distant enough he can pretend it doesn't have anything to do with him.

Jared and Xander start whining about how stupid art is and how they have way more important sports stuff they could be doing if they didn't have this dumb sculpture project.

Ives makes a smart remark about how much they'd have to practice to have a shot for improving the Hawks' win-loss record.

Jared and Xander turn on Ives, Hudson steps in to defend him, and Kon vaguely registers the shoving and angry whispering as something he should maybe do something about. 

But the chaperone is right there, isn't it her job to stop them? Probably it's her job. And it's not like Jared or Xander would listen to him, anyway. Kelly Clark's status in the school food chain has been made pretty clear. Kon confronting them would just get him caught up in the scuffle and then someone might really get hurt. He can't risk that, not when he's done so well avoiding accidents this far.

"Hey!" It's Tim who speaks next, not the chaperone. There's a sharp edge in his voice and Kon can hear his heart rate going up even more, starting to get into the range Kon knows isn't normal for humans. "Don't mess around near that. You don’t know what could—"

Jared laughs. "What about it, dork, planning to tell on us?"

"Come on, I just—"

A shove. A gasp. A crash.

Xander yells "Jesus Christ that's gas!", his voice suddenly high pitched and panicky.

Sharp gasps and coughs from everyone else.

The chaperone gasps "Oh my god get out—" in a weird choked voice.

Running footsteps.

The door slams. 

So. Even for Gotham that's weird. 

Kon assumes at first, or tries to, that it's all a prank or something. Or maybe that there's some really impressive performance art included in the exhibition. It’s not convincing, but he tries.

Mainly, he just doesn't want it to be anything that would require him to leave his spot and look at the front of the room again, because it's not hard to guess what just happened and what just broke. He glances down, half-expecting to see tendrils of green heading his way, and when he doesn't, he takes another step back into the corner anyway.

Just in case.

His attempts to tell himself this doesn't involve him last about two minutes, when an alarm starts ringing downstairs with painful force.

"Um, guys? What just happened?" Kon calls, still hidden behind the case of prints.

No answer.

"Did you seriously all leave me here? Tim? Ives?"

More silence, except for the alarm which is now seriously starting to give him a headache. And it's loud enough he can't listen for anything else without making it even more painful.

Kon sighs, pressing a hand over his eyes for a moment. Of course they left the new kid to get yelled at for breaking the art, he thinks. He’s not exactly surprised, even with the chaperone there. But he thought at least maybe Tim would stick around to take the heat, or just try to help him explain…

He looks around the corner of the display case and swallows hard, ducking back into his hidden spot as he sees the low cloud of swirling green smoke.

"Come on, normal boy, you can't stay here," Kon mutters to himself. If he doesn't want to deal with a whole lot of questions, or someone from Administration trying to contact ‘Mrs. Clark’ and then having a whole lot of questions about that, he has to find the rest of the group. Not that it's going to be easy since he barely found his way here in the first place. Without Tim it might take him an hour to make it out.

He takes a deep breath and steps around the corner again. The thing about Gotham kids, Kon is discovering, is that they're all really good at finding escape routes, so all the potential witnesses have already bolted. He doesn't see any cameras angled towards his end of the room, so he decides he's in the clear to blow the smoke away. It makes him feel childish, as if he’s ever been a child, but he doesn’t want to have to walk through it to get to the door.

"There, that's bett—Tim!?"

Under the last hazy streaks of smoke, Tim is sprawled in a pool of shattered glass, shuddering.

Kon stands frozen for a moment, watching Tim's chest heave as he gasps. His fingers scrape aimlessly on the tile, one catching a shard of glass and leaving streaks of blood behind.

Seeing the blood finally forces Kon to move. "Tim! What happened?" 

He bolts towards him, getting ready to scoop him up and swoop through the nearest window to get him to a hospital—forget the secret identity, this is important. Then he stops, so quickly his sneakers skid on a shard of glass, as he realizes what he's looking at.

Do not move seizure victims is one of the top ten Rules For Supers. Rescue pointers with Clark across Lois' kitchen table is probably the closest thing he ever had to school before Gotham: Kon wrote it down in red letters in the composition notebook Clark gave him. 

Unless there's another immediate, major threat—stray missile, Intergang hit squad, building collapse—it's almost always safer to leave someone having a seizure on a stable surface where trained medical personnel can help them. Snatching them into the air and flying off might feel more effective, but it risks injuring them trying to hold them still or, worse, letting them slip when they move unexpectedly. 

Kon's powers aren't going to help Tim right now, but he can't just stand there and do nothing. He kneels next to Tim and starts brushing glass away. That seems to be the most dangerous thing at the moment.

"Everything's going to be fine, Tim," Kon says quickly as he reaches out to brush a few scraps of glass from Tim's hair before they can fall into his eyes. "I'm sure they'll remember us in a minute." Tim doesn't seem to hear, his eyes fixed on the skylight above where the display was.

His hair is surprisingly soft. Softer than Kon’s, at least, which is about all he has to compare it to except Robin, whose hair is always so heavily gelled to keep it from getting in the way during his Bat-work that Kon almost thinks of it as part of the mask. 

But he isn’t here to think about that. Kon scans the building as well as he can, until he has to give up with a double-vision headache. Still, he sees enough to confirm that the building is not only not under attack but completely empty. No teachers or even security guards anywhere, just Tim and Kon and the blaring alarms. 

Apart from the staff, their school group was the only visitors, so it must not have taken long to evacuate the building completely when alarms started going off. Hopefully once Ms. Fradon does a headcount, she'll send someone back in for them, but for now he has to do what he can for Tim.

Which isn't much at the moment.

Some Superboy…

After getting rid of as much of the glass as he can, Kon stands and drags the toppled stand of the display a few feet, so Tim won’t hit it while he’s spasming and break his hand. Then he kneels next to Tim, and reaches down carefully to adjust the strap of his backpack enough that he can slide it out from underneath him. "Come on, work with me here," he mutters as Tim flails—if he had both straps on Kon wouldn't have been able to get it off without hurting him, but finally he pulls it out from under his back and lowers him to the floor as carefully as he can.

Tim's eyes meet Kon's briefly, blank and wide as he draws in harsh shaking breaths.

"It's going to be okay," Kon promises, though Tim doesn't seem to be able to hear him. "I'm just—going to give you some space."

If Tim accidentally hit Kon he could break his hand on him as easily as on the art pedestal, so Kon moves away a few paces and sits with his back against another display, a rack full of weapons behind a glass barrier.

He x-rays the backpack briefly, but doesn't see any medication or other signs that this might be a regular thing with Tim. He slides his own backpack off and sets it next to Tim's, then pulls his glasses off so he can press a hand to his eyes. He takes a few deep breaths. "Now what?" 

Kon tries to look through the building again, but while he thinks he can see activity in the lot down the hill where the bus parked, nobody is coming their way. Maybe they thought 'Kelly' and Tim ran outside when everybody else panicked. 

Kon puts his glasses back on, closes his eyes until the headache from using his x-ray in Gotham subsides, and tries to think. He can't just sit here and wait: if the chaperones search the gardens outside it might take hours before they work their way back to the museum building, and Tim needs help now. Kon could go to find help on his own, but he isn’t sure he’d be able to find his way out, and even if there isn’t much he can do for Tim at the moment, leaving him by himself seems worse.

"So, what do humans do in this kind of…oh, right."

He starts searching his pockets, then his backpack, finally turning up the Nokia that serves as his emergency lifeline to Tana. "There you are! 911 time."

He fumbles the number a couple times since he's trying to go too fast for the buttons to realize he’s pressing them, but finally the line connects.

"Gotham County Emergency Services, what is the nature of your emergency?" She sounds middle-aged, with a soft upstate accent, more like a small-town extra in an old sitcom than a lifeline to emergency help. 

Kon decides to trust that she knows what she's doing, since he definitely doesn’t. "Oh, hi, thank you, uh, I…I don't think it was natural…" The gas looked decidedly evil-experiment-ish.

The woman on the other end of the line makes a soft concerned noise. "Sorry, hon, that's not what I meant. Police, medical, or fire?"

That makes way more sense. Sorry, longtime listener first time caller, Kon thinks and almost would have laughed if he weren't so worried about Tim. "Medical, I think. There was some smoke but nothing's on fire." 

Kon walks towards the far side of the room to see if he can see the rest of their group, but the windows only look out on the forest, not the access road. He paces, staring out at the trees and trying not to explode with impatience at the painfully slow typing—normal not-Lois human speed typing, but it still feels like time is slowing down between each key—on the other end of the line.

"Are you injured? How many people are with you?"

"It's not me, it's my friend, we're in the museum and I guess he breathed this green smoke after the thing broke so I don't know if that caused it since I didn't see but I think he's having a seizure—"

"Wait, wait, slow down, stay with me here. What is your location? A museum?"

Kon takes a deep breath and forces himself to relax, unclenching his fingers from around the phone. "We were with a school group at the Gotham Museum of Art—"

"Oh!" she exclaims. "Hang on—it's the missing kids!" she calls to someone on the other side of the call center. "One of them just called—sorry, your teacher is already on the phone with us and she's about to fight a security guard for keeping her outside the safety perimeter. Are you still inside?"

Kon tries to give a more helpful answer this time. "Yes, Tim's having a seizure, I couldn't move him." He turns back and looks towards where Tin is lying, wincing at how small he looks.

"Yeah, Luis, both of them—sorry, just getting on the same page here. So you’re saying Tim breathed this smoke."

"Yeah. I think—maybe a lot." The jar of smoke must have fallen directly on top of him when the jocks shoved him into the display. He would have been too close to hold his breath before it was too late, and the whole cloud must have been sitting on him until Kon blew it away.

She hisses and taps a few keys. "Gas attack. Okay."

"I don't think it was an attack or anything…" Apart from Xander and Jared attacking Tim, which is probably not what she means.

"It's just the category in the dispatch system. Okay, so, is Tim laughing? Smiling?"

"...no?" Obviously not, lady, what the heck? "He's just kind of…shaking."

“Oh, that’ll be the fear toxin then.” The operator doesn’t even sound surprised. She sounds, bafflingly, relieved, but that can't be right. What is wrong with this city?

“Um, is he gonna be okay?”

“Ambulances are already headed your way for the other students, so I'll let them know you're inside. They’ll come find you as soon as they can. He should be out of danger once he gets some care. What’s your name?”

“Kelly…”

“Okay, Kelly, stay calm for me, alright? Did you breathe any of it?”

This is how Clark talks to people, Kon slowly realizes. Calm, factual, reassuring. Maybe this is where he learned it. “No.”

“Is there anything else going on in the building? People with guns? Angry man dressed like a scarecrow?”

"No, everybody else ran…"

"Is there any more gas?"

“No, it was just in a jar or something, it fell over. I think it’s all gone now.”

“Okay…” More typing. “We're going to come for you as soon as we can, so just open a window if you can find one and stay with him until help arrives, okay?”

“How long is that going to take?” Tim’s eyes are closed now and his heart is doing really weird things, speeding up wildly and pausing in jerky little fits as he spasms on the ground. Kon shudders—Gotham nurses might be used to this but it’s still not what people’s hearts are supposed to be doing.

“Just a few minutes," the operator says soothingly. "Just hang on a few minutes for us and then everything will be okay. The gas can cause…He might start seeing things that aren’t there. Try to stay calm and distract him if you can, but don’t grab him or restrain him unless he tries to run or hurt himself. We don’t want either of you getting injured any further. What floor are you on?”

“Third floor, the special exhibit…just, just please hurry, okay?”

The operator starts to say something else, but then Tim groans raggedly, almost a sob, the first sound he’s made since the jar shattered. His back arches off the ground and his pulse shudders.

“Listen I gotta go, please make it fast—” Kon hangs up and runs over to kneel next to Tim. Not that there’s much he can do.

Nothing but watch as Tim spasms once more and goes limp.

"Tim? Tim, hey, don't do this now, the ambulance is going to get here any minute."

Kon can hear his heart going, but it's faint and rapid. He reaches for Tim's hand and presses it carefully, wiping off one of the streaks of blood. 

"Tim? Can you hear me?"

"You're going to die."

Kon drops Tim's hand and flails back, almost kicking into flight in surprise before he lands heavily in a sitting position.

He stares at Tim, panting. "Uh…sorry what the fuck?" 

Kon winces a little as the swear slips out, the old LOST A LIFE warning flashing at the back of his mind like an arcade screen—he knows he doesn't have anything to worry about now, but he’s stuck with the instinct.

Tim’s eyes are still closed. He’s completely slack. Maybe Kon is the one imagining things.

“Tim? What’s going on?”

Tim sits up. 

The movement is all wrong somehow, too fluid, spine rolling bonelessly like a possessed girl in a bad movie. Kon shivers, then jumps as Tim raises his head and his eyes snap open—no longer blue but fogged with swirls of muddy green.

Fear gas, the 911 lady said. Guess she wasn't kidding. Now Kon remembers Robin saying something about it a few times, joking once about a cracked rebreather and Nightwing teasing him for it before sharing his own. But he was so casual when he brought it up Kon assumed it couldn't be anything actually serious. He thought the name was just…more Gotham drama.

"Tim?" Kon moves closer, kneeling in front of him cautiously. "Is that you?"

Obviously it's him, but it seems like something else might be driving at the moment. Kon swallows down his own fear at the thought (what Luthor wouldn’t give to find out how to do that) and tries to concentrate. 

Tim is shivering hard enough that Kon can almost hear it, and he barely needs his powers to hear his heart racing like a panicked bird. It isn’t fair, Kon thinks. He’s the one this should be happening to: as a super, it’s part of the job description. All Tim did was get on the bus that day.

"You—everyone always thinks they're invincible, but they're not.” A few more tendrils of the green trickle out of Tim's mouth as he speaks, hanging in the air between them. “Especially you."

Kon jolts as Tim's head tilts, thinking wildly for a moment that he knows, somehow. Then he remembers what the 911 lady said about hallucinations, and realizes that Tim isn't actually looking at him. He's staring vaguely through him towards the far wall, his eyes unnaturally wide and fixed behind the green. He has no idea who's there at all, and definitely not that his new classmate is an invulnerable alien. 

"Isn't it ironic," Kon mutters. "No, Tim, I'm fine. You're fine."

"No."

Damn, he sounds awfully convinced. That's the awful thing—he doesn't act terrified, more…resigned. Like he just got through bargaining with the universe and all it told him was to go bother somebody else.

Kon knows what that's like. But hearing that cold hollow word from Tim shakes him.

Tim's just a normal human kid, apart from being rich enough he never has to worry about wanting for anything. Someone like him shouldn't have to deal with any trauma worse than an annoying brother or a fight over report cards, so what could hurt him so bad?

It's not like he was developed from scratch to replace Superman and then, surprise, Superman's back, time to scrap the useless clone, well, give it a few months, maybe there's still some profit to make—

Tim crawls closer and Kon scoots back a few inches, feeling a stray shard of glass crumble painlessly under his hand. "One of these days you're going to fly away and. And not come back. Ever. And I—I'll just watch you leave—"

Kon remembers the whispers from the cafeteria, the thoughtless cruel jokes and mocking comments from the back of the classroom. Tim's parents died in a plane crash. This must be about that somehow. He wonders what horrible vision Tim's seeing, because he can't possibly be this scared for some random kid who only transferred in a week ago. Kon's just standing in for something else: girlfriend, maybe, though Kon's never seen any sign Tim's in a relationship.

Whatever he's seeing, whoever he's seeing, it must be something incredibly important to him. Kon's never heard him speak like this before, rough and intense and desperate.

"It's just me, okay, it's Kelly." 

Wow, comforting, knowing a near-complete stranger is listening to you spill your worst fears. He thinks about holding him, anything to make him stop shaking like that but—if he fights—Kon winces as he imagines feeling Tim breaking in his hands. And even if that wasn’t a risk, this experience is already going to be awkward enough for Tim when he snaps out of it without coming back to his senses in another boy’s arms. 

Kon settles for hovering his hands vaguely in the air over Tim's shoulders. He smiles, hoping it looks normal and human enough to be calming. "Come on, partner, let's take it down a notch. We're at the art museum, nobody's flying away, nobody's going to die."

Tim blinks, frowning, a frustrated crease forming between his brows as if Kon is the one who can’t see reality. "No—no, you don't understand, you always think you're the one who should sacrifice—"

"Tim...nothing's happening, man, nothing's there. You're starting to freak me out here." 

He waves a hand in front of Tim's face, trying to break his focus on whatever he’s seeing, but Tim just grabs his wrist and pushes it down. Kon drops the strength—he's learned from Clark that humans can be wicked strong when they panic, enough to break their own bones without realizing it, so often in a rescue the main goal is making sure they don't hurt themselves. Even knowing that, though, Tim's stronger than Kon would have estimated for his size. 

Tim stares at Kon’s hand for a moment, then his wide green-misted eyes latch onto Kon's. He blinks slowly, his expression dazed. Maybe that's progress, Kon thinks, trying to be hopeful.  He keeps talking. Clark always recommends talking.

"Come on, Tim, snap out of it," Kon says, taking Tim's arm and tugging as gently as he can until he releases his grip on his wrist—he can feel his pulse surging even through his sleeve. “I don't know what you're seeing, but…everything's, okay, it's Wednesday in Gotham so it's freakin' weird and depressing and covered in smog, but apart from that everything is fine, so." 

The ambulance is sure taking a long time. Kon heard sirens distantly down the hill after the alarm inside the museum shut off, but nobody's approaching the building yet.

He tries to remember what else Clark usually does. "Deep breaths, yeah? Try that, maybe…"

Tim leans forward, grabbing the front of Kon's sweater. 

Kon leans back, but his awkward position makes it hard to move away from Tim without pushing him. “You need to stop grabbing me, you don’t understand…I don’t want to hurt—”

Words pour out of Tim’s mouth in a rush as his heartrate rockets. "Why can't you listen, you're not immortal and you're not replaceable, it's going to happen one day and it's going to be my fault, my fault because I got close and that always happens but I can't, I can't stop, I know it's not safe but I—can't—"

And then Tim kisses him.

He can taste the green stuff as Tim gasps into his mouth, a sour sickly sweet flavor like the Kool-Aid man died in a sewer and wasn't found for a few weeks, but it isn't affecting him the way it is Tim. He can feel it trying, weird little carbonated bursts on his tongue as the psychoactive chemicals encounter Kryptonian taste buds and give up. 

He can hear his own pulse spiking wildly, but it's for…a very different reason.

Boy oh boy do I hope Gotham has a not-cheating-if-it-was-supervillains clause.

Robin’s good at kissing. No mistake. But he tends to be slow, cautious, a little too gentle, insisting Kon take the lead as if he’s worried he might break if Robin pushed him. Even though obviously Robin is the breakable one in this scenario, and Kon would really love to take things up a level if only Robin would make a move.

Tim…Tim kisses like he’s trying to crawl inside him. His hands dig into Kon's hair and drag across his back under his sweater, rough enough he would be leaving marks on a normal human. Even though Kon doesn’t feel the pain he shivers at the touch. Is super-touch a thing? He feels like he can sense each separate thread of his t-shirt as Tim’s fingers press across it and it’s nearly more than he can bear. Tim doesn’t let up for a second, and Kon starts to find himself a little breathless.

Tim finally breaks off for a moment to breathe himself, a few more tiny clouds of green floating up as he pants. Kon is still in too much shock to move, and a moment later Tim’s hands are on his shoulders, shoving him down.

Kon puts a hand against Tim’s chest, then pulls it back: he knows how easily ribs can break, since he and the other clone managed to give Robin several fractures just by holding him. “Tim, dude, hang on, I don’t think you really want to—” 

“There’s no—time—”

Tim is practically laying on top of him now, his heart beating against Kon’s own as he kisses him again.

Kon can feel the panicky strength running through Tim, almost hear the strange way his muscles are surging, and between this and watching Tim bolt off the third-floor balcony it's definitely the safer option. He resists the urge to push Tim off or do anything that would startle him into a more threatening hallucination or worse, another seizure.

It’s not because he wants Tim to keep kissing him, he tells himself. He wishes it was Robin instead—but even though Robin is in the same city he might as well be on Mars.

The kiss seems to go on forever. Kon raises a hand cautiously, tracing two fingers through Tim’s hair and feeling him lean into the touch. Maybe desperation for contact is part of what’s happening to Tim—Kon knows what that’s like, after being raised behind glass.

Finally, Tim pushes away, staggering to his feet for a moment and taking a few wobbly steps back until he hits the case full of weapons. His eyes fly wide for a moment as he glances around, then he slowly slides to the floor, curling up with his arms around his knees. He’s still shaking, enough that Kon can hear his shoes shifting on the tile.

Kon rolls over and sits up, putting a hand to his mouth as he tries to catch his breath. He isn’t even sure he needs the oxygen that badly, or if he’s just in shock at what just happened. He isn’t sure how long the kiss took, but he can finally hear sirens on the hill when he stretches his hearing cautiously past the alarms.

“Tim?” Kon pulls his sweater back down and takes a cautious step closer, crouching on the tile.

Tim’s head snaps up, his eyes wide. Wide and blue now, green tears smearing down his cheeks like the fog is draining out of him. He blinks a few times, then his eyes seem to focus properly for the first time in far too long. “K…Kelly?” He shivers. “Is that you? I can’t…can’t really tell…”

Kon sighs with relief. He hasn’t been so scared since he watched the other clone throw Robin off one of the tallest buildings in Metropolis. “Yeah, yeah, Tim, it’s me. Feeling any better?”

“Is this…supposed to be better?” Tim shivers again, the words hitching as he speaks. “In that case ‘bad’ must have freaking sucked.”

“You sorta got…fear gassed?”

Tim blinks and looks around again. “Oh…shit.” His eyes trail vaguely over Kon. “Are…are you…”

As if that should be his priority right now, but maybe it makes sense after whatever vision he had. “I’m fine,” Kon says, and quickly changes the subject. “They’re sending an ambulance, it should get here any time." He tries to remember what the 911 operator told him. "What else did she say…Right. Distractions, okay, I can do that, distractions coming right up. Tim?" He moves a step closer and tries to make sure Tim’s actually seeing reality. "Tim, you with me?”

Tim bats at the hand Kon waves in front of his face and misses completely. “‘M fine…”

“Cool, great, definitely believe that. Name all the Spice Girls.”

“Uh…Sporty…Baby…” A wrinkle forms between his brows and Kon reminds himself very firmly not to find it cute because despite everything now is not the time. “I can do the Sandy Denny lineup of Fairport Convention?”

“Is that a band, or a nursing seminar at a beachfront resort?” Tim actually laughs at this, a tiny exhausted noise that floods Kon with relief. Distractions working, he thinks. “Come on, Tim, Spice Girls, you cannot possibly not know this unless you live in a cave or something.”

Tim rubs his temples and Kon decides it’s safe to walk over and retrieve his backpack.

“R…Rich…?”

“Posh, oh my god.” Kon unzips the backpack and rummages inside past the textbooks and the thermos, but only finds more cans of Jolt. “Do you drink anything besides energy drinks? Don’t answer that, I already know the answer and it’s terrifying.” He digs in his own backpack and finds an unopened water bottle, not that he thinks there's any point worrying about Kryptonian germs after Tim…after all that, but still. He cracks it open and holds it out. "Here.”

Tim takes the water. His hands are still shaking and his eyes still aren’t tracking fully—it takes four tries before he grabs onto it successfully. "Did I…say anything?" he asks in a thin voice.

He leans back against the low base of the display case and runs a hand back through his sweaty hair. Suddenly he looks small and tired, as if he's waiting for Kon to say something mocking. Kon remembers the cafeteria again.

You did a lot more than say things, Kon thinks. "No, you just kind of mumbled a bit, but I couldn't make anything out. You seemed really—scared.” 

If Tim doesn't remember, or perhaps just doesn't want to be reminded of the details, it would be horrible of Kon to rub it in his face. Especially since from what Kon understands of human statistics he probably doesn't even like boys. (Even if he's apparently incredibly good at kissing them.) The least Kon can do is make sure he doesn’t turn things unbearably awkward. It's not just because he doesn't want to risk losing his only friends at the school, he tells himself.

Tim looks doubtful, but luckily at this point Nightwing turns up, so that subject dies the quick death it deserves.

Nightwing drops almost silently from the skylight on to the globe’s now-empty white pedestal. Even Kon would barely have heard him without the strange stressed flip his heart does when he sees Tim.

Which is weird, because Tim is sitting up and talking by this point and he's not injured beyond a couple scratches, so Nightwing has obviously seen worse. Maybe he has a history with the fear toxin.

Nightwing is wearing the same suit he usually wears, but instead of the half-face vinyl mask he has an all-in-one faceplate with a blue upper panel and white eyepieces above a transparent oxygen mask. His waist-length ponytail flows under the buckles in back to spill over his shoulder.

"They’re right where you said, O. Missing students located," Nightwing says into the mask's transmitter, his voice just slightly distorted by the plastic. "Appear unharmed. Nightwing out." Then he presses the heels of his hands over his eyes. "Goddamn, what maniac decided to put concentrated fear toxin in a jar and call it modern art, what the f—"

Tim coughs around a mouthful of water. "Perez," he gasps. "There was a tag. Thought creatures of the night could read."

“Tim!” Kon hisses, waving towards the pedestal. “It’s Nightwing.”

Tim squints. “Must be still hallucinating,” he says weakly. “Thought it was somebody important.”

What is wrong with people here, Kon wonders once again. “I am…so so so sorry about him, Nightwing, sir, he’s been through a lot, and also probably some of that is the Jolt talking…”

Nightwing's heart rate slows down slightly from the panicky thrum as he takes a deep breath. "It's okay, if he can make smart remarks he's probably feeling better already. The med team is outside, but they're still getting into the hazmats so I came in ahead. And I've already figured out this is Tim." He points at Tim, then looks to Kon. "Which means you must be Kelly, right? The one who called 911?" 

He doesn't speak in the same deliberate calming way as the 911 operator. Instead, the words come out at an easy friendly pace, like recovering from fear-inducing toxin is a completely normal teen hangout activity—even though Kon can still hear his heart going faster than should be normal as he adjusts the small satchel slung over his shoulder.

"Yeah," Kon says. "Kelly. That's me. Tim didn't knock it over," he adds quickly. "Uh, not that I saw who did."

"No worries, I'm not telling on anybody." In one graceful motion, he lifts up into a handstand and springs off the pedestal, his legs swinging over and around the rest of his body to drop him into a perfect crouch between Kon and Tim. "Hakuna Matata."

Nightwing and Robin are both graceful, but where Robin's grace is an efficient flow, stunning in its impeccable simplicity, Nightwing's grace comes with the electricity of performance, like he enjoys the chance to show off. And Kon really can't blame him: if he was that effortlessly coordinated he'd never pass up a chance for an audience. He doesn't think he would know how to copy that move, not with his muscles alone and no flight.

And, like the 911 lady recommended, it is very distracting.

Nightwing smiles at Tim through the plastic mask as he opens the bag and starts fishing in it for something. "Okay, Tim, I've got an antidote serum, can you roll up your sleeve? Oh, a cardigan, nice, very helpful, just slide that down a bit. On Star Trek they always rip people's sleeves off to do this and I tried that a couple times but actually it's just inefficient if a costume studio didn't make them to do that and also, this one time, I did that and it turns out her jacket is Vivienne Westwood. So, that was the day Nightwing almost got murdered with a spike heel. I'm not telling so you can't either. There, all done."

Nightwing does it so smoothly that Kon doesn't even notice the needle going into Tim's arm until he's already pulled it out. "And then…darn, I grabbed the kindergarten emergency bag, not the highschool emergency bag. Sesame Street bandaids only here, do you want Big Bird or Cookie Monster?"

"You're a cookie monster," Tim mumbles vaguely. Kon can already hear his heart calming down from the wild ripple it's been in for the last ten minutes.

"Bringing my color scheme into it. Nice. Creative." Nightwing hands Tim a bandaid, then turns to Kon. "Kelly, I should give you the serum too, can't be too careful…"

Nightwing drops the empty needle on the ground between Kon's sneakers and starts to open the first aid bag again.

Kon's heart lurches. 

It's all over.

I couldn't even last two weeks?

In terms of people to get caught by, Nightwing is about the third worst-case scenario after Robin himself and Batman. Not that Kon thinks Nightwing would actually be upset at him the way they would be for (in Robin's case) following his own boyfriend around pretending to be somebody else or (in Batman's case) breaking the Batman's Clubhouse No Supers This Means You rule of Gotham.

It's just that Nightwing is…cool. Like, really cool. They haven't met much, since Nightwing tends to have complicated space stuff going on (it's so cool), but every time he's been at a Justice League event Kon tags along for he always says hi in a really cool way and sometimes even talks to him during lunch if there aren't any other young heroes around, and at the verdict party he gave Kon possibly the most badass radio control car ever made and he and his cool ponytail are, in general, cool.

(Robin does not share this opinion of Batman's lieutenant, or at least he pretends not to. The word Robin uses is 'menace'. But he completely fails at hiding the warmth in the way he says it.)

So getting caught in a dumb lie, trying incompetently to be human, while wearing a dorky sweater, by his maybe boyfriend's cool maybe older brother…

Maybe Batman would be preferable.

At least, if Kon grovels enough, Nightwing might have pity and let him retreat back to Metropolis without immediately tattling on him to all the other Bats. Maybe.

If Robin is to be believed, it's about fifty-fifty between that and getting mercilessly teased about it until the end of time. 

Nightwing rummages in the small medical bag and Kon braces for the needle and the recognition and the laughter. The needle, mostly. He knows it won't go through, so its stupid to be a baby about it, but he can't help a strange catch in his chest as he stares at the empty needle on the tile, a weird lump that's hard to breathe past.

Nightwing tilts his head a little, blinking behind the mask, then puts the needle he's holding back in the bag. "Well, you look okay, but I'm going to give you the topical antidote just to be sure. Can I see your wrist?" He flicks his hands open briefly so Kon can see they're empty, then reaches in the bag again, pulling out a roll-on tube of gel.

Kon hesitates for a moment, then pulls up the cuff of his sweater.

"Good thing one of you was lucid enough to remember phones exist," Nightwing says as he reaches out. "This is going to be cold for a second."

Kon doesn't really feel the temperature change when it goes on, but he tries to give some kind of reaction at the contact anyway. "I…Tim was closer," he says. "It basically fell on him. I think I was standing under a vent…"

"Must have been freaky when everyone else scattered."

Kon nods. “I…I didn’t know Tim was still there,” he says, not sure why he’s trying to apologize to Nightwing for not doing more. “I didn’t know how to help…”

Nightwing smiles behind the transparent mask as he caps the tube and puts it back in the satchel. “It’s okay,” he says. “You did the right thing staying with him. Thank you.”

Kon stares at him, struck by a feeling of exhausted, wild elation as Nightwing reaches out to pat his shoulder. At the same time, all the alarms shut off and the lobby doors slam open.

“EMTs coming in! If you can hear this, remain where you are!”

“That’s my cue to head out,” Nightwing says. “Good job, kid.”

He flips to his feet and springs backwards onto the pedestal, then launches upwards towards the dome. By the time the EMTs arrive in the exhibition room, the only sign he was ever there is the empty needle on the ground.

Chapter Text

Tim doesn’t appear at school the next morning. Kon wasn’t expecting him to, even though they’d agreed to start working on the sculpture project after school that day. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen after the museum incident. But the last sight Kon had of Tim was him looking tiny and exhausted under a shock blanket as the medics escorted him to an ambulance: he just wants some assurance he’s okay.

None of the other students have clear memories of what happened, and none of them want to talk about it either. All of the nerds-and-one-goth (and one secret Superboy) avoid the subject at lunch and ignore the empty seat Tim would have been in.

Xander is also missing, even though he was one of the first people to run. Kon doubts he got anything more than a whiff of the gas. 

"Where's our star fullback?" Jen asks after Hudson makes his traditional exit from the jock table to join them.

“His mom kept him home today,” Hudson says with a shrug. “I think she was pissed the chaperone ratted on him for pushing Tim. Clarissa’s pretty annoyed he didn’t try to help anybody, either. She fell on the stairs and sprained her ankle when he ran past her. All is not sunny in paradise, so he'd better buy some really big tulips or he’s uninvited to the Saint Patrick’s Day yacht party.”

“God, I love that we have a double agent.” Jen twirls one of the crystals around her neck and grins. “This is better than All My Children...”

Xander being within hailing distance of consequences for his actions would certainly explain the conversation Kon can currently hear through the walls of the principal’s office. Someone is screaming over the phone about ‘those city kids attacking my darling perfect boy’ and how offended she is at ‘the ridiculous idea that he could be making any trouble’. From the way the principal is sighing between vaguely sympathetic noises, the sound is giving her as much of a headache as it is Kon.

Without Tim’s steadying heartbeat around, Kon is jittery the rest of the day. Still, he at least survives without any major incidents (although he does come close to setting an eraser on fire when the teacher calls on him unexpectedly in Algebra). A week ago, or even a few days, and he’d have been a wreck, but maybe he’s starting to figure out how this whole human thing works. 

Or maybe, he thinks, remembering Tim huddled against the museum display with green tears streaked down his face, Gotham is putting his problems in perspective.

Compared to what Tim went through yesterday, a math worksheet is nothing, Kon tells himself as he walks home.

Once he’s nearly there, the sun actually breaks through the clouds for the first time that day. Kon looks around to see if anyone is watching, then drops his backpack and climbs halfway up the fire escape of one of the abandoned apartments across from his block. 

He sits on the landing for a few minutes, swinging his feet and looking up to let the sun hit his face. Some of the gray feeling Gotham leaves in him melts away as he stares up at the sky, then closes his eyes, enjoying the soft floating feeling just this side of letting himself actually drift off.

Then he swings over the rusted railing and jumps down—it's twelve feet, that's normal for a human, right? And nobody was looking, anyway. He feels lighter now that he has the sun, like gravity is affecting him less. In Metropolis he took it for granted, but now he can really start to appreciate it.

This is perfect weather to throw all the windows open and really get started on the basement. He's humming the chorus of a Spice Girls song as he jogs up the steps and opens the door.

'Make it last forever,
Friendship never ends…'

The phone is ringing inside the house.

Time stops.

Kon has thought, once in a while, that he ought to talk to somebody about his little problem with phones. Unfortunately, since the starting sentence of that conversation would be along the lines of 'So back when I was abetting Lex Luthor with the many many crimes that he cloned me to distract from…' it's kind of a non-starter. He can't even tell Lois, since she'd just start feeling bad about her failed attempt to rescue him.

Cell phones don't have the same effect, somehow, he gets along okay using a cell number and Angela's answering service for Galactic. And phones that aren't actually in the same place he lives are fine as well, so the radio show or conference calls from Tana's office have never been a problem. 

But Lois had an old landline in her apartment that day, and Kon is currently discovering that it's exactly the same model as the one in the Gotham house. It freezes him instantly.

When time starts again, he's holding the receiver tight enough he can hear the plastic warping. He stands there numbly, waiting for Luthor's voice to come through the line.

"Uh…hello? Is this the right number? I’m trying to reach Kelly Clark? Hello? Is—is anyone there?”

For a moment, as the voice on the other end pitches deeper into a sharp urgency, something familiar stirs. Then Kon drags himself back into reality and remembers Ms. Fradon handing out contact information sheets during that first art period, after everyone drew for their teams. He must have given Tim the landline instead of the cell.

“Oh my gosh," he says in breathless relief, "Tim! Hi, I wasn’t…expecting a call.”

There’s a soft hissing sound on the other end, as if Tim’s doing breathing exercises. Then, just as Kon winds up his superhearing to figure out if there’s something more going on in the background, he starts talking a mile a minute. “Kelly, hi, great, freaked me out for a second there when you didn’t answer, anyway, sorry I bailed on finally starting the project, I know we were supposed to meet today but I'm kinda, you know. Unavoidably detained. I’ve been thinking about it though! I have sketches. So many sketches. But probably yours are better, I don’t know. You're good at sketches. I was thinking, I have a lot of photos from around Gotham, maybe we could use them somehow, like cover part of the sculpture…we could go around and take more once we look through what I already have—”

Kon cuts in cautiously. “Are…are you sure you shouldn’t just be resting…?”

“No absolutely not.” Tim says it sharp and flat. 

Kon instantly understands why he might not want to sleep. But he isn't exactly sure what's going on right now is an improvement. "Are you…feeling any better?" he asks awkwardly. Making out with someone while high on fear gas isn't really a situation covered by the standard greeting card lines. 

"Oh! Honestly I'm fine? I would have been at school but after the EMTs took me to the hospital they told me I have to stay home for two days with this bullshit pulse monitor thing, which is ridiculous, because I'm fine. Basically. Just…yeah. Fine…" His voice trails off and Kon can picture his drowsy vague stare. 

Once Tim stops talking, Kon can hear the soft music playing in the background.

‘Mare Nubium. Umbriel.
Mare Imbrium. Ariel.
Et itur ad astra…’

Kon’s never paid much attention to New Age music, but he did paid a lot of attention to Baywatch montages while he was behind glass during development, so he recognizes Enya immediately. He never took Tim for a New Age type (it seems more like the kind of thing Jen would like), but maybe it’s calming after what he went through.

"Tim?" Kon prompts, wondering if he finally fell asleep.

"They took all my Jolt away."

Well thank heck someone is connecting the dots here, Kon thinks. "That's awful," he says. “How could they.”

"It's soooooo annoying, because I'm clearly fine? But nobody is listening to me. And they won't stop worrying, even though obviously they're more…" He trails off with another soft hissed breath.

Kon doesn't remember Tim being hurt in the museum—he tried so hard not to break him—but he can't help remembering the strained way Robin breathes when he's trying to conceal an injury. "Are you sure you're—"

“Yeah, yeah, fine, just waiting for this stupid thing to go down for a second." He takes a few more slow breaths.

"Huh?"

"Oh yeah, it's so dumb, okay, so if my pulse goes over 130 it automatically alerts the hospital and I'll have to convince Dad to convince them I don't need an ambulance and the school's insurance will get involved so it will turn into this whole huge deal. You agree this is bull, right? I feel like I'm in a mirror universe." 

"Uh...yeah, for sure…" Kon is definitely on the side of the ambulance in this scenario, but he decides agreeing is better for the stress Tim is currently denying.

"I'm living in hell right now, they won't let me have any caffeine so I’m trying to work on this project thing to stay awake and it's working but nobody will believe me when I say I'm fine which I clearly am and everyone is trying so hard not to stress me out that they're driving me out of my mind.”

Kon’s hearing faintly catches a conversation in the background as Tim rambles about how much he’s suffering.

“Monopoly?” Dick is saying.

“Out of the question.” British accent. Maybe that’s the rumored butler.

“Yeah, he does tend to go mad with power,” Dick laughs. He sounds weirdly proud, if anything. “Uno is obviously out, Trivial Pursuit is on thin ice…oh, Scrabble. Timmy! You want to play Scrabble?” He yells up the stairs and Kon winces as the sound slams into his superhearing.

Tim growls into the receiver. “Just a second.” He sets the phone down and Kon hears him walk across the room and open a door. “I told you and I keep telling you, anything is fine! Having an opinion is very stressful!” Slamming the door behind him, he stomps back across the room and throws himself on the bed. "Sorry about that. Oh god, it's at 117. Kill me."

"I'm sorry," Kon blurts out.

"What for?" Tim sounds confused—maybe he really doesn't remember what Kon is apologizing for. And of course he wouldn't know the biggest secret. 

"Just…everything."

"You don't have anything to apologize for," Tim says. "If you weren't there it could have been a lot worse. Actually, I'm the one who should be sorry, I riled up Xander and got us all gassed."

"None of it was your fault. I just—" 

Kon sighs, wishing he knew what to say. It isn't fair that Tim went through such a horrible experience and Kon was only left unscathed because he was lying about who he really is. Even if he doesn't remember, he didn't deserve for that to happen—to be forced to expose himself like that.

"Come on, Kelly, what else could you have done?"

Kon winces. He's been thinking exactly that all day, but unlike his own inner narration there isn't any accusation in Tim's voice.

"Besides, it's Gotham, that kind of stuff happens all the time. And I'm fine! So it's fine. But I'm glad you stayed around, at least. So thanks." Someone knocks softly on the door of Tim's bedroom. Tim sighs, then the sound dips a bit as he leans away from the phone. "Yeah?"

The door opens quietly. "Tim?" Dick says, much quieter than Kon's heard him speak before. "Listen, sorry for taking things too far, I'm just trying to...We don't have to play anything, but do you just want to come down to the kitchen instead of brooding in here?" Kon would not call it 'brooding', more 'bouncing desperately off the walls'. "Alfred has tea—"

"Black tea?" Tim says eagerly.

"Peppermint," Dick replies, tone apologetic but Kon can hear the hint of a relieved laugh underneath. "But there are chocolate scones."

"Oh, I suppose it's acceptable," Tim grumbles. "I'll take it. Just a second. Kelly? Hey, I'll see you later, we should meet up for the project, does Sunday work? I'll email you."

"Sure, sounds—"

"Is that the hero of the hour?"

"Wait—Dick! No!"

After a few seconds of scuffling noises, Dick apparently wins the tug-of-war over the receiver. "Kelly! Listen, thanks for looking out for Tim, the place wouldn't be the same without him."

"I…I just called the ambulance," Kon says, twisting the phone's cord in his free hand. He doesn't know what to do with everyone praising him for just sitting there unable to decide whether to risk his cover or not. Sure, his powers weren't very helpful with seizures or toxic hallucinations, but there must have been something more he could have done. "Nightwing was really the one who—"

"Oh my god, you met Nightwing? Tim didn't say anything about that. For shame, Tim."

Tim's voice is hitching as if he's fighting very hard to hold in a laugh. "I didn't think…it was important…can we get some scones…"

"I think Tim's lived here too long to appreciate how cool Nightwing is," Kon says.

"Yeah, I'll bet." Dick laughs. "Personally I think the ponytail is very impactful."

"Please... please my heart monitor…" Tim begs in the background.

"Well, I'll let you go, glad you're okay. See you downstairs, Tim."

"I am so sorry about him," Tim says as he reclaims the phone.

"It's okay," Kon says quickly. "It's…nice that he was worried about you?"

"Oh, I guess," Tim says with a hint of reluctant warmth. "Anyway, I'd better head down before he gets to all the scones. See you Sunday?"

"Sure, it's a date!" Kon replies cheerfully, before remembering who he's talking to—he's too used to only negotiating with Robin on the phone. Tim makes a confused noise and he winces, hoping he hasn't accidentally triggered his memories of the kiss. He finally seemed to be relaxing a little, he doesn't need that reminder. "Er, like, not…a date, just. A date. On which. We will meet. Sure. This is how time works. Gotta go bye—"

Kon slams the phone down hard enough that a few new cracks spiderweb out through the kitchen's flaking paint. Then he looks down, yelps, and drops the four feet to the floor.

He sits on the cold tile, tossing his glasses aside, and puts his chin in his hands. "Wow," he mutters. "Smooth."

Probably, he thinks, he should explain to Tim what happened at the museum. He has the right to be fully informed, even though Kon wasn't the one who did anything: all he did was try not to hurt Tim. Kon doesn't think he would be upset—he hopes he wouldn't be—but there it is.

Dammit, even if I was human I'd still be different…

With Robin, everything just…happened. There was so much else going on at the time that both of them being boys felt like a pretty minor factor, especially since Robin was another cape. After letting Robin escape from Luthor the first time, Kon was so convinced his time was running out that he didn't care any more about keeping up appearances. 

Kon can still remember drifting in his penthouse pool trying to shut out Luthor's world when all the music shut off, leaving only soft breathing in his bedroom. It was when he grabbed Robin and pinned him against the wall that he first thought Robin might also be interested in—more. 

With the mask, it was impossible to tell exactly where he was looking, but he was definitely looking. They were almost pressed against each other as water dripped off Kon's hair and down his chest, and Kon could feel the heat coming into Robin's face as his heartbeat stuttered and the lenses shifted focus.

But then Kon had to threaten to throw him off the building and Robin had to get out the Kryptonite, so…that moment kind of went nowhere.

And then, finally, they were sitting in a roller coaster in the golden afternoon light, and the sun was hitting Robin at just the right angle to shine softly on his lipgloss. And Luthor might have been about to retire the Superboy brand permanently, but at least he would be able to say he did this first. 

One small step for a clone, one giant kiss for clone-kind…

The lipgloss didn't taste like much. Robin tasted like the cherry amusement park slushee.

He can still remember Robin staring at him in a kind of frozen wonder before he melted into the kiss, his green eyes almost glowing. That was before Kon knew they were contacts, of course. Although knowing Robin, isn't that exactly what he'd say to put Kon off the scent if his eyes actually were green? Or maybe he'd known Kon would think that…maybe he has green eyes and green contacts.

Be that as it may, in the end everything worked out somehow.

Except that right now, Kon wants to kiss Robin again, probably more than anybody has ever wanted anything in the history of absolutely freakin' ever, and he has no idea how to make that happen.

Finally he drags himself off the floor and wanders into the basement to start half-heartedly poking through the heaps of junk. But he's lost focus now, and finds himself wanting the sun again.

He picks up a tattered box at random and reads the label. "’Grandma's Apocalypse Emergency Stash. For Suzie, Christmas 1975. Packed with Love.’ Geez, Gotham has problems." He shakes it. Which, since it was a moldy mouse-shredded cardboard box full of hand-canned glass jars, was definitely the wrong plan.

Kon looks down at the marmalade covering his jeans, the floor, and the surrounding piles of boxes. He wrinkles his nose at the smell—somehow it isn't quite as bad as Tim's weird coffee potions. But it's still very bad. "Okay, it's definitely time for a walk."

He speeds upstairs to change his clothes, then drops the sticky jeans in the washing machine on his way to the door.

The rest of the marmalade covering the basement he can worry about later.

It's still light out, the golden of mid-afternoon trying its best to bring a little color into the gray skyline. Kon skips a hat and ties his jacket around his waist instead of putting it on over his Garfield t-shirt, so he can get as much sun as possible. It's cold enough that a normal human should be wearing a jacket, but he's figured out from observing the jocks that human boys in this region often try to show off by wearing less than the weather requires. 

He should be able to get away with it if anyone sees him, and there's rarely anyone out at this time of day, anyway. Of his few neighbors, one is convinced the government is out to get him and never leaves his house, one seems to work night shifts, and the only one he's actually encountered is a tiny old lady who walks her equally tiny and old Chihuahua at the crack of dawn. (She offered to let him pet it, but it was so small he was scared even to use his x-ray on it in case he broke it somehow.)

So the chances of running into someone are pretty—

"Kelly! Hey!"

Whoever it is behind him, they’re definitely not a tiny old lady. Kon freezes mid-step, trying to figure out who else could have recognized him. Tim is the only person at school who knows he lives in this part of town. He can't say he's exactly stoked at the idea of some of the other students like Clarissa and her clique seeing the kind of neighborhood he lives in.

"Kelly! Wait up!"

On the other hand it's definitely too late to pretend he didn't hear anything.

He turns and relaxes as he sees a familiar blond ponytail. 

"Steph?"

Steph waves, her hair bouncing as she jogs up. Today she's wearing ribbon-embroidered jeans and a quilted denim jacket with fuzzy appliques of the Flash's logo. The tote over her shoulder is covered in superhero logos scribbled in fabric paint, for everyone from Shazam to Wonder Woman to Green Arrow. 

Even though a lot of the GCHS kids seem to admire the local vigilantes in the same way they appreciate underground rock bands, Steph is the only person Kon has seen around town wearing out-of-town hero emblems. Maybe that's why she feels so instantly approachable.

"I didn't know you lived around here," Steph says as she stops in front of him. "I thought you must be closer to the mall."

"Oh, yeah, I live just over…" Kon waves vaguely towards the other side of the rundown block. "What brings you here?"

"Salvation Army," Steph says with a shrug. "Can't exactly afford GAP so I only go to the mall for the hardware store. Hey, are you busy? Maybe you could join me, grab a bite somewhere. I still kinda owe you for the whole…" She mimes something falling on her head. “Thing.”

"Uh…" Kon thinks of his plans for the rest of the day, which involve mainly: 1, replaying the embarrassing end of his phone call with Tim, 2, listening for Robin's radio while cleaning finely aged marmalade out of the basement, and 3, doing his dreaded geometry homework. None of those are exactly time pressing. And Steph is about the most normal person he's ever met, so he could probably learn a lot from her about how this whole human thing works. Starting with whatever a Salvation Army is. "Sure, let me grab some cash."

Steph walks beside him down the sidewalk. “Great! Was your head okay, by the way? I still feel bad.”

“Well, I lived, as you can see.”

"And I’m glad to see it! Now could you try to not freeze? This is worse than the guys in Track, I’m shivering looking at you.” Steph hugs herself and quivers dramatically as they round the last corner.

Kon rolls his eyes behind the glasses and unties the jacket from around his waist. He slides it on and zips it halfway up. “Happy now?”

“Almost…Not to be a nosy little Nancy Drew or anything but do you mind if I come inside for a minute? I could use some water, I walked all the way from North Gotham High."

"Oh…yeah. Sure." There's not really any normal reason Kon can think of to keep her away from the house. Hopefully she isn't too horrified to associate with him once she sees it. "It's right here."

"Nice, home sweet…" she breaks off, her cheerful smile freezing as she tries and largely fails not to grimace visibly. "Damn."

Kon winces as he glances over his shoulder. "We are starting to think there were some things the, uh, realtor didn't mention," he says as he climbs the steps and reaches for the door. Like…everything, basically, he thinks. No wonder she didn’t ask Tana any questions before she handed over the keys. 

"Well!" Steph claws back some of her prior enthusiasm. "It sure does…have a roof!" She follows him up the steps, then stops in the doorway. "Dude, was that not locked? Does this place not have locks? That's not okay, shit, I know a place if you need it—"

Kon stares at her from the kitchen. "It's got locks?" He almost floats up to grab a glass from the top shelf of the cabinet—he can't give a guest a paper cup—then remembers he's in non-Super company and climbs onto the counter to reach for it instead.

Steph leans against the dining table, flails for balance as it wobbles, and moves to the archway between the dining and living room. 

Kon suddenly remembers that the backpack holding his suit is still sitting behind the couch, where he dropped it while he was watching the Bats on TV. And he can't remember if he zipped it closed or not.

Luckily, Steph is focused on what must seem to her a much bigger problem. "Okay so if it has locks why didn't you have to unlock that door just now."

"Uh…cause it wasn't locked? I was just going on a walk through the neighborhood." Kon jumps down with the glass and fills it from the tap. "One haute cuisine water, get your exclusive water right here—"

"Wow, fresh squeezed and everything!" Steph takes the glass and drains it eagerly. 

Kon ducks into the living room and grabs the backpack with his suit, then runs down the hall to his bedroom. He shoves the backpack under the bed, then opens the cash box in the back of his closet and grabs a handful.

Steph is wiping down the glass when he returns. "Ready to go?" she says. "Please actually lock it this time."

"I know how locks work…" Kon sighs. He fishes his keys out of his pocket and spins them with a flourish before locking the door, exaggerating each motion as Steph watches from the bottom of the steps. "See? Locked. I just don't see the point when I'm right there." His Kryptonian senses mean he can hear anything going on at the house in plenty of time, so he doesn't bother locking it when he's less than a mile away.

"Yeah, right there in Gotham!" Steph throws her hands in the air.

Kon shrugs. He doesn’t get why she's so upset, since it isn't like the locks could actually make him any safer if something like Mister Freeze was serious about getting in. "It's always been fine before."

As he reaches the bottom of the steps, Steph suddenly throws an arm around his shoulders. Kon freezes in surprise as she leans in. She’s a little taller than Tim, and with her heeled sneakers she’s at eye level with Kon: he doesn’t know how to react to the sudden direct eye contact. "Listen, kid, this small town trust thing is adorable and I don’t want to turn you into some jaded recluse, but I am now genuinely in fear for your life. So. I guess it is up to me to explain the ways of the world to you."

"Uh…okay…?"

"Take it from someone who knows, yeah, if you're living in Gotham you gotta just plan on everything in the city being out to get you at all times." She waves a hand to take in the dingy skyline.

Kon tries to work through the logic of this. "Including you?"

Steph takes a step back, putting a hand to her chest in exaggerated horror. "Me? No! Everything else? Yes!"

"But my neighbors all seem fine, and Robin patrols around here, I’ve seen him. And it's not like there's anything in the house worth stealing, so I don't see who would care?"

Steph grabs his arm and starts marching down the block, and Kon quickly follows so she doesn't discover the whole immovable object thing courtesy of a dislocated arm. "That's not how Gotham works, Kelly, you think freakin' Bane and Killer Croc are doing risk-gain assessments? They don't care! It's like tornadoes, okay, if you're in the wrong place you're just fucked and that's it!"

Probably this is a good point for anyone without powers, but Kon has fought King Shark. Compared to the kind of villains Metro attracts, Croc is minor league. But he can't tell Steph this, and he really wants to change the subject, so he just shrugs.

Steph sighs and drags her free hand through her bangs. "You don't get it, huh." She reaches into her canvas tote and pulls out a small aerosol can covered in purple duct tape and glitter gel pen curlicues. "Here, just—take the dang bear spray. We'll come back to this later."

"Uh…thanks. I will…definitely use this." Kon puts the can in an inside pocket of his coat and Steph relaxes a little, letting go of his arm and slowing her steps.

Salvation Army, which is apparently a thrift store and not a lame knockoff Justice League toy line, is about a mile away in a lower-rent commercial section, between a dollar store with a window full of dented canned goods on one side and a storefront selling cell phones of what Kon suspects is questionable legal background on the other.

Kon sits on a couch (For Sale As Is, Upholstery Has Clayface Damage) and guards Steph's bag while she runs around the store trying on shoes and coats. 

Somehow, even though she's completely human, she feels so much more suited to the environment here, like he's a lost migrating bird and she's some kind of…badger or something. Badgers seem to know what they're doing, and what they're usually doing is gleefully clawing at things that bother them.

He takes the bear spray out and turns it in his hand, wondering what Steph has encountered to make her so convinced he'll need it. She's so prepared for everything: she probably would have known exactly what to do in the art museum. Maybe he should tell her about it and ask how he could do better next time, but she might have too many questions he can't answer honestly. He'd rather have at least one person he isn't directly lying to.

Kon didn't realize how tired he was after yesterday until he sat down on the couch. He doesn't feel like he deserves to be tired, since nothing actually happened to him, but spending so long terrified for Tim was hard work, apparently. And there hasn't been proper sun over the city in days. As he listens to Steph running around the store humming along to the Madonna song playing on the 80s radio station, Kon sinks into the heap of throw pillows. Maybe I'll just rest my eyes for a minute…

"I said, wake up!"

Kon jolts awake, blinking in the uncomfortable false sunlight of Luthor's underground conference room. Fudge, he thinks, trying to remember what he's there for, what did I do wrong now? He's been trying so hard to keep Luthor happy, but every time he thinks he has it figured out Luthor changes his mind about what he wants.

Distantly, something strikes him as wrong about the whole situation, like he shouldn't be there at all, but he pushes that feeling aside since the most important thing at the moment is ensuring Luthor decides to keep him around.

"Is it such a difficult request for you to pay attention?"

Luthor's standing in front of the door with his arms folded. He looks angry—not that he ever looks at Kon any other way when there aren't cameras or witnesses around. But the tension around him is higher than normal, like he's about to lash out if Kon doesn’t do something to appease him really fast.

"Sorry," Kon says quickly, then adds "Sir," because it sometimes helps.

Luthor takes two steps forward, closing the distance to the chair Kon's sitting in. He grabs the back of the chair, spinning it away from the table, and Kon tries to hide his flinch as Luthor leans over him.

"You don't even know what you're apologizing for, do you?"

“Um.” Luthor’s glare darkens further and Kon winces. “Sorry?”

Luthor gives the chair another shove and turns away with an angry growl. “Of course not…” He paces across the room, stopping in front of the door again. “I really thought, recently, that we had come to an understanding.”

Kon stares down at the carpet, remembering the disappointed look on Lois’s face the few times he’s glimpsed her since then.

Luthor keeps going and Kon tries to look attentive. Sometimes if he just sits there while he rants he’ll eventually calm down. “Don’t I give you anything you could possibly want? All the best toys, new video games…parties anyone else would kill to get into…you liked Keri, didn’t you?”

Kon shrugs, trying not to show how he feels to hear Luthor talking about Keri that way, as if she's as human as his air hockey machine. "Yeah, I liked her fine." 

He liked her a lot, really, but even back when the movie was in production he felt enough of a strange atmosphere around Luthor that he knew he couldn't bring her any deeper, so he went along with the publicity dates and stopped picking up her calls after the premiere. And that was obviously the right decision, thinking about it now.

But knowing that doesn't make him feel any less alone.

"Then why, Superboy, after all I've done for you, do you persist in being so ungrateful?”

“I don’t know what you—”

Luthor throws the door open and Kon freezes, feeling the color drain out of his face as Mercy Graves drags a dark-haired boy into the room.

Tim Drake catches himself awkwardly with cuffed hands as Mercy shoves him to the ground and pushes himself slowly to his knees.“Wh…what’s going on?” 

“Thank you, Mercy,” Lex says calmly. “We are going to have another discussion about your little habit of associating with people outside of the approved list. We’ll start with Robin.”

Tim raises his head, staring wide-eyed at Luthor. “What’s happening? I’m not Robin—”

“He’s not Robin!” Kon stands and starts forward, then freezes when Mercy puts a hand in her pocket: he doesn’t need the x-ray to see the print of the gun in her suit jacket. “I’ve never seen this kid before, Luthor, let him go. Please.”

Tim turns to look at Kon for the first time, and his blue eyes go even wider. “...You,” he breathes, his expression going completely blank.

“Well, well.” Luthor grabs Tim’s arm and drags him up, grip tight enough to make him wince. “I think one of you is lying.”

“Let me go!” Tim protests. Then he looks at Kon again, and Kon takes a startled step back at the sudden fury on his face. “You're not even human? How could you do this to me?”

“Luthor, please—”

"Didn't you care at all what could happen to us? To the city?"

“Mercy? I think we’re through here.”

“Luthor, wait, he really isn’t—no, please!”

Kon bolts upright with a gasp and almost collides with Steph, who's leaning over him holding a hat.

"Aw, man!" she sighs. "You ruined it."

"Ruined wha…" Kon looks around. He's sitting in the middle of an avalanche of scattered hats.

"I was trying to see how many hats I could pile on you before you woke up." Steph sits on the arm of the couch. “Guess you really needed the nap.”

"...oh."

It's all so—normal. The worn gray couch, the needlepoint pillows of faintly disapproving cats, the fluorescent lights. Steph with her chin in her hands, nodding along a little to the easy listening strains of Toto. The pile of hats.

It is, Kon discovers, basically impossible to have a breakdown accompanied by Toto's Africa. His mind rebels at it, like the cheery synthesizers are some kind of psychic barrier.

None of that really happened. It's just the same dream as usual, but now Tim's been pulled into it. Luthor and Mercy are in jail, with no idea Kon ever went to Gotham, and Tim—normal human Tim, who couldn't possibly be Robin—is safe at home with his brother and butler keeping an eye on him.

Still, the dream-Tim did have a point. Kon has to make sure he stays careful, so he doesn't put his classmates in danger. It's not for nothing that Batman has the rule about no Supers in Gotham.

"Kelly, are you okay?"

Steph's intense normalcy helps, too. Kon feels the dream's grip on him slowly fading, the illusory Luthor protesting briefly as its voice trails away into a tiny cartoonish whine (How dare you not pay attention when I'm—), then nothing.

He knows it won't last, of course—breaking free of Luthor’s residual hold on his mind has been a long road—but he'll take what he can get.

He takes a deep breath and grins at Steph. "That is a lot of hats."

"Yeah, I got up to…eighteen!" Steph shoves the last one onto Kon's head before he can duck, holding the ribbed edge of the striped ski hat down with both hands.

"Wh—hey!" Kon bursts out laughing, holding up his hands but stopping before he can actually touch her. "Not fair!"

"Anything goes in…the Game of Hats!" Steph declares dramatically between giggles. Then she pauses, tilting her head a little. "Huh, you look way different without your glasses." She blinks a couple times, leaning in closer: their faces are close enough that Kon can see her lavender glitter eyeshadow.

Kon tries to hide his jolt as he realizes the tiny weight of the glasses is gone. "I…do I?" He hopes it sounds casual. "Also where are my glasses, because I do need them, actually."

Steph releases Kon and slides off the couch to start looking under hats. "Not that you look bad with them, you know? Or without. Just different. You look like, I don't know, you could be on TV or something. Have you ever been on TV?"

Kon pulls the knit hat off and runs a hand through his hair. "Come on, Steph, who would ever want to put me on TV?" he says. 

Which, being a question, isn't a lie. It's just that the answer, instead of being 'nobody' includes, as a sample: The Muppets (yes, did you even have to ask?), Star Trek (no, Robin said he hates Star Trek so Kon turned it down without explaining why he asked), Morning Scoop With Cat Grant (yes, always, anything for you Cat), and Young Aquaman (yes, currently in scheduling talks for next season).

So, yeah, it's a lie.

Steph laughs as she looks under a baseball cap. "Listen, I'm just trying to cheer you up, man. I tried to get scouted once for some Metro agency but they didn't even look at my pictures…"

"Wow, so they're morons." Kon would bet his next radio check that Steph would be a natural on a commercial set. But maybe it's for the best she missed out—there isn't much a can of bear spray can do about industrial corruption. 

"You don't have to lie to make me feel—found them!" Steph waves the glasses over her head, then sits up and holds them in front of her face. "Are you sure these actually do anything?"

Kon grabs them and puts them on. "Yes, they do."

"If you say so. Come on, let’s go eat. You look like you could use it."

“I…sure.” Kon tosses some of the hats out of the way as he sits up, then spots a familiar symbol and grabs one. “I’m getting this.”

“Nightwing? Wow, that must have been a custom sample or something, nice.”

Once they check out, Kon follows Steph down the street towards a block where he can see colorful fast food signs. “What are you thinking, McDonalds? I could eat some nuggets.”

“Gotham doesn’t have McDonalds.”

Kon feels his mouth drop open, and he stops dead on the sidewalk as Steph keeps going. “What? Why?” he asks as he jogs a few steps to catch up.

“They did a launch event with the Hamburglar and every crook in Gotham took it kind of personal.” Steph laughs and shrugs. “Nobody got hurt, but I think they lasted about three weeks? And then they closed and we all went back to Crown Burgers.”

“I don’t think we have that in Metro…”

“It’s a front for Condiment King. It’s good though, you should try it. But just so you know, I do avoid the secret sauce, in case there’s mind control chips in it.”

“Oh my god,” Kon says softly as she leads him towards the round brick restaurant with its neon light-up crown. “I will…keep that in mind.”

“Are you up to anything this weekend?” Steph asks as they take their trays to a back booth. “I’m kind of busy right now because one of my teachers is all ‘damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead’ on this project. He's in some rivalry with a teacher at GCHS, I think, so he wants another trophy. But I was still thinking about going to the movies for the black and white monster movie festival. What do you think?”

“Oh…I would, really, but I’ve got—stuff.” Friday afternoon through Saturday he’s supposed to be with Tana in Prague for another filming session, and on Sunday he’s finally going to Tim’s house, wherever that is. “Next time? I can give you my AIM.”

Steph beams and hands him a purple glitter gel pen. While he’s writing down his contact details, she steals half of his fries.

Chapter Text

“Oh my god, that's who you are! I can’t believe I didn’t see it before!” 

Kon points an accusing finger at the front seat of the car, where Tim sits with his hands over his face, sliding down like he's trying to melt into the leather seat.

"Every day at lunch you all sat there and—"

“We all thought you knew," Tim groans. "I wasn’t exactly hiding it!”

“How could I have been so…you’re Bruce Wayne’s kid!”

“Again, I thought you knew—Dick, stop laughing!”

Tim reaches across to shove his shoulder and Dick sweeps his hand out of the way without even looking away from the wheel. "It's my car and I'll laugh if I want to. Which I do, and am. Ha ha."

Kon drags his hands back through his hair. “How did I miss that, oh my god, all the clues were right there.”

“I mean, even calling them clues is kind of generous. Cripes, my lunch box is monogrammed.”

“I know…” How could someone raised by so many journalists be so blind?

"The only reason nobody told you was because it was—"

"Yeah, it was so obvious…" Kon slumps in the seat in shame.

Dick leans on the steering wheel to laugh for another half-minute as Tim folds his arms, looking in the side mirror to meet Kon’s eyes before sighing and waving dramatically towards Dick. Kon offers a shrug and sympathetic (if still shocked) head shake in response.

As Dick sits up and shifts gears, the tires of his car scrape on the gravel drive up to Wayne Manor. They slowly pass under the archway that set off Kon’s realization—sure he knew who Bruce Wayne was, every entertainment or media figure in Metro knows him by sight, but until he saw the sign he never thought of Bruce ‘more media scandals than Lois Lane has first edition Trixie Belden novels’ Wayne as a man who had children. He just thought of him as the guy Luthor was constantly mad at for stealing his thunder by turning up to red carpets with a string of supermodels or Oscar-nominated actresses.

Vaguely, he remembers the name Wayne turning up in a lot of headlines a bit more than a year ago, which is around the time Tim seems to have been adopted. In his defense, he had a lot of shit of the Luthor variety distracting him at the time, so he never actually bothered reading any of it. And of course after that Robin was distracting him, and now even here in Gotham he was so focused on being a normal human boy that he didn't even notice the pretty obvious connection.

"Why didn't I just Ask Jeeves…" he mutters, and Dick starts snickering again.

After the arch is a gate, and Dick reaches through the window to press the buzzer on an intercom.

“Master Dick?” says the British-accented voice Kon remembers hearing in the background of the phone conversation.

“Alfred! Hi! Hope Gotham’s favorite playboy is decent, Tim brought a friend home from school. What’s for dinner?”

“Shrimp with buttered wine sauce. Give me a moment to ensure your friend is spared any tawdry scenery…”

“Thanks! Sounds great.”

The intercom clicks off as the gate slowly grates open.

"We'll take the long way up so Alfred has time to make the place acceptable," Dick says, turning the car onto a broad dirt path. "Gardens are still a bit dead, but if you look out the window you'll see some very charming sticks…Alfred's pineapple greenhouse…"

Dick keeps narrating in a blithe tour-guide voice as Tim puts his hands over his face again.

"...and that's the barn, which we have thoughtfully allowed to fall apart in case you suddenly decide to have a plein air painting phase, and…here we are." 

He pulls slowly around a dry fountain as Kon stares up at Wayne Manor for the first time, all four granite-walled floors of it. It looks more lived in than he imagined—a basketball hoop set up on the brick pavement in front of the flower beds, pots of herbs in a broad garden window, a hammock in Gotham Knights blue and gold hung precariously from an upper balcony. But all the same it has a cold air to it, and not just because it's at the top of a mountain in March. 

There's a feeling of strangeness to the whole place, something tilted and off that makes Kon's eyes sting a little as he grabs onto his powers. Maybe Jen's jokes about crystals and ley energy are actually on the money: whatever it is that makes Gotham so Gotham-y, the grounds of the Manor are loaded with it.

As the car turns, Kon can see that not all of the building is as regal as the east facade; on the other end of the building, a large strip is covered in scaffolding, tarps and plastic sheeting. Through the plastic, Kon can vaguely see shattered windows and charred walls.

Dick stops the car neatly in front of the steps. "Thank you for flying Air Grayson today. You two get out, it'll take me another five minutes to put the car away." He makes a shooing motion at Tim as he and Kon climb out.

Kon glances back for a moment as they climb the pink marble steps, just in time to see the bright expression on Dick's face slowly fade. He sighs and rests his face in his hands for a moment, then reaches for the stick shift.

"Kelly?"

"Right behind you!" Kon hurries up the steps behind Tim as the car pulls away, a faint trail of Natalie Imbruglia in its wake.

"Thanks for coming," Tim says, adjusting his backpack. "Sorry I wasn't at school, I feel like I'm a terrible project partner…"

"What? No!" Kon waves a hand. "You just got totally f—messed up by fear juice, nobody would blame you for taking another week off if you wanted to." He spent the rest of the week expecting an email from Tim calling their meeting off, but all Tim did was ask if they minded meeting at his place instead of 'Kelly's' house, since even after losing the heart monitor he's under orders to avoid exertion. "You know you could have mentioned where you lived in the email instead of just saying you'd pick me up?"

"I really thought you knew. I didn't want you to think I was—comparing." Tim's voice goes soft.

This seems like a good time to change the subject. "What happened to the west wing?" Kon asks, leaning out over the porch railing to look at the mess.

Tim joins him at the railing. The sun plays across his face and he closes his eyes for a moment, turning towards the light as it turns his skin bright pink and gold, like it's washing away the frightening pallor Kon remembers from the museum. 

"That was before I was adopted, so I don't really know," he says as he opens his eyes. "We’re all sure it was arson, but Bruce was on vacation and there weren't any witnesses, so nobody was ever charged. It looks worse than it is, it's really just a couple rooms."

Even in Metropolis, a couple burned rooms would be most of Kon's home, but he decides not to mention this as Tim reaches for the door.

It opens even before his hand touches the latch, and an elderly man in a tailcoat smiles down at them. "Did you have a pleasant drive, Master Tim?"

Kon wasn't using his super senses, but he still hadn't heard a thing from inside. It was like the butler just materialized there.

"Thanks, Alfred, it was fine," Tim says, then points over his shoulder at Kon. "This is Kelly, he's from school. Kelly, this is Alfred, our butler." He drops his backpack to peel off his coat as Alfred raises an expectant eyebrow. Under the coat he's wearing a loose flannel over a t-shirt of the Enterprise.

"Huh," Kon says. "No kidding."

Sure, Tim said he had a butler, but there's a world of difference between hearing a guy has a butler and actually seeing a guy’s butler in the elegant, golden-age-of-Hollywood flesh.

"No kidding," Alfred says mildly, just as it's occurring to Kon that staring is rude. He hangs Tim's coat and closes the door. "Shall I bring refreshments to your room, Master Tim?"

"Oh, no, it's okay," Tim says quickly, picking his backpack back up. "We're mostly going to be using the workshop in the south shed anyway, we can get our own snacks, it's fine. Kelly, didn't you wear a coat?"

"It's a heated car," Kon says, though he realizes he should have worn one anyway for appearances. Even with that excuse, the thin loose sweater doesn't look right for March.

Tim frowns doubtfully, then shrugs and grabs his arm, pulling him across the broad entry to the east stairs as Kon gazes around the space. He feels a flicker for a moment, and winces with expectation that his history with Luthor is about to crash down on him again now that he’s faced with a rich man’s house, but even after he braces for it nothing happens. Even with the slight pall of strangeness hanging over the hill it sits on, Wayne Manor’s thick stone walls and elaborate carved wood ornaments couldn’t be more different from Luthor’s aggressively minimal glass-and-chrome residence.  

"Dad!" Tim yells up the stairs. "We're going to use the shed for a project!"

Someone steps out of a study at the top of the stairs and…

Yup, that's for sure Bruce Wayne.

And just this morning Kon thought his stay in Gotham couldn't get any weirder.

Kon keeps his head down, not that he thinks being recognized is a very likely option with Bruce Wayne. But Superboy did meet Bruce once in Metropolis, for about twenty seconds on the sidewalk in front of Lois’ apartment before Bruce swept off with her for an interview. 

Kon leaned on the car and sarcastically told him to have her back by eleven, Bruce said he would be 'the pinnacle of chivalry' with a wink that would have communicated something very different if his smile wasn’t so vapid, and Lois rolled her eyes and asked if he told all the nearly-engaged women that while threateningly waving her Superman necklace.

Lois is fond of Bruce: in the way women are fond of golden retriever puppies or purse poodles. She likes him because he’s friendly, non-threatening, and if you look close enough into his eyes on a good day you can see about two separate brain cells bouncing around in there. 

They met when Bruce and Clark were double-booked for a cruise, of all things. They dated for a few weeks, but it was all over and done with long before Lois took any real notice of Clark, or discovered Superman's secret identity. 

She found Bruce too resoundingly dense to feel any real attraction, but they still keep in touch years later. Lois bugs him for Gotham scoops whenever she thinks Cat Grant is starting to show off too much, or occasionally attends events as his plus-one to scare off Metro gold diggers.

So even if Bruce has about as much brain matter as the average Beanie Baby, there's always the risk that if he spills too much to his Metro bestie she might figure out what Kon’s game is. He still has to be careful. He lets his hair shadow his eyes and slouches a little to hide how much taller than Tim he is.

He didn't need to worry about that, though, since Bruce barely gives them a look. "Sounds good, son, listen, I'm—going into the office to take an important call, so I'll see you after supper. Tell Alfred if you and your friend need anything."

"Sure. Kelly, my room's up here, I have some stuff…"

They pass Bruce on the stairs—he gives Kon a longer and more intent stare on the landing, briefly looking far less dim than Lois' reports as his pale blue eyes focus in on Kon's. But it only lasts a few seconds, then he shakes his head and jogs the rest of the way down the stairs. "Clearly that would be absurd," he mutters under his breath as the butler meets him by the door.

"Bring the car around, sir?"

"It's alright, I could use the walk. Keep the boys out of trouble for me."

"I shall…endeavor." Somehow the butler manages to pack what sounds like thirty years of exhaustion into the word. Having met Dick, Kon can imagine why.

"This is my room," Tim says.

On the door, a large sheet of construction paper reads DICK KEEP OUT in bold magic-marker letters. Attached beneath it is another saying YOU KNOW TO WHOM THIS REFERS and a third saying DON'T TRY TO CONVINCE ME YOU CAN'T READ.

"Never would have guessed," Kon says as he follows Tim inside. "Security system working?"

Tim laughs as he pulls out a dresser drawer, then starts digging through the contents. "Don't tell Dick I said this but he's really not that bad." He opens a plastic card box and nods before tossing it onto the bed. "There it is. He's just…a lot. And he came back so suddenly. I need time to myself sometimes, you know? He doesn’t get it."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Kon mutters. Clark and Dick are completely different, except in how there they are. He loves Clark to death, and he knows he can trust him with anything, but at the same time the unavoidable constant presence of Superman is exhausting. Which is why he's here right now, sitting on the richest kid in Gotham's Star Wars bedspread.

"I thought you were an only child?" Tim is half buried in the second drawer now, his voice echoing through the wooden box. "Here, catch. It's film, don't open it."

"Oh, oh yeah, just, I mean…" Kon grabs the small plastic case Tim tosses at him as he flounders to answer. "Before we moved here we were staying with my. Cousins. Uh...step cousins, I guess."

Tim hums with vague interest and Kon tries to keep his exhale from sounding too relieved. Probably it's safer if he's the one asking the questions, he decides, and pushes off the bed to pace around the room.

It's a large room, probably bigger than Kon's whole studio in Metropolis and generous even compared to the bedroom in Luthor's penthouse. Besides the bed, drawers, and large antique wardrobe, there's a desk covered in camera equipment, a curtained corkboard taking up most of the wall behind the door, a shelf full of Star Trek tie-in novels and video game equipment, and, because this is a room belonging to a teenage boy, a generous layer of scattered laundry covering the floor.

"What've you got here?" Kon says, reaching for the curtain over the corkboard.

"Absolutely nothing!"

Tim dives for the curtain with speed impressive to even a super, pulling it out of Kon's hand before he can shift the fabric more than an inch.

He moves so fast, in fact, that the fabric ripples in his wake, moving enough for Kon to glimpse the corner of what looks like a Teen Beat cover.

"Nothing important," Tim repeats, putting his back to the curtain. "Old project. It's a mess."

"Sorry," Kon says quickly, raising his hands and stepping back. "Didn't mean to snoop." For a moment, he's tempted to use his x-ray, but—even if Tim had no idea, that would just be rude.

So maybe he thinks it would ruin his nerd table credit to have a thing for boy bands. That's…tragic, really, but not a job for Superboy at the moment.

"It's okay," Tim says, taking a deep breath. "Shouldn't have freaked. I, uh, don't have people over a lot. You…" He runs a hand slowly back through his hair. "Actually, you're the first person I've brought here since I moved in?"

Now Kon definitely can't do anything that would betray Tim's trust. "I…huh. Wow. Why?" He replays the question in his head and winces. "Sorry, that was super rude, you don't have to—"

"No, no, it's okay. I…I don't know why, to tell you the truth. Maybe…" he shrugs and leans against the curtained wall, tipping his head back. "I knew Ives and Jen and everybody since before I was adopted. And they're cool about the whole thing, but—the Waynes have, like, a history in Gotham, you know? They've been tied up in everything for centuries. I was already—the Drakes weren't poor, but it wasn't like they're in our local history unit."

"That could definitely be weird," Kon agrees. He knows there's a unit on Superman in Metropolis, too—and that Kara's in it but he isn't, not that he's upset or anything.

"Yeah," Tim says, wrapping his arms around himself. "So maybe after everything happened I felt like bringing them here might change things. But you're not from around here, so, I don't know." He shrugs and pushes away from the wall. "It's just different. I feel really…comfortable, around you." Somehow he manages to make 'comfortable' sound like a completely alien concept. "Maybe it's just the fear gas aftereffects, I hear sobbing your eyes out onto someone's sweater can lead to bonding." He laughs, a little thinly.

I should tell him what really happened, Kon thinks. He should say something now—it hasn't even been a week yet. It hasn't been long enough that he could be accused of hiding it, but it will be soon.

But he's doing so well at being normal right now…

"Actually—"

"So anyway, I figure this is about all we need to get started," Tim says loudly over him. He grabs a tub of printed photos from the desk and drops the case of film in his pocket. "Oh yeah, sketches, I've got those somewhere…there we go." He shoves a file full of papers into Kon's arms. "And now for the shed." 

He practically pushes Kon down the hall towards the stairs, and the chance to talk about what happened is over.

After the overwhelming size of the house, the shed is, to Kon's relief…just a shed. Kind of a large shed, but otherwise totally normal, with a normal workbench and normal clutter and normal slightly faded Gotham U pennants pinned up on the walls between football calendars that have been hanging on the walls since the 80s. The most unusual thing about it is the curtained off darkroom (more DICK DON'T TOUCH THIS signs hang from the curtains) and a boombox on the end of the workbench with a stack of CDs.

Kon takes a quick look through the pile—mainly Enya and Clannad and other New Age stuff. “Don’t you listen to anything, like...okay, I’m stopping myself before I say normal…”

“This is just what I listen to while I’m working on projects,” Tim says, grabbing the CDs out of his hands. “But I’ve got more in the house if you’ve got requests. Green Day and stuff. Nine Inch Nails. And Alfred got me onto some of his old British stuff, but that’s all on vinyl and it has to stay in the library…”

Kon whistles. “No middle ground? Figures.”

Tim rolls his eyes. “Thanks for the analysis,” he says, shoving Kon’s shoulder playfully. Kon almost wishes he didn’t have to lean away from the soft point of contact. “Alright, Kelly, if you’re so particular, what do you like?”

They’re standing so close. Kon can almost imagine himself taking another step, his hands fitting perfectly around Tim’s shoulders, lifting him so he can hold him against the wall at just the right height—

—Why would I want to do that? Kon catches himself and takes a step back, wondering what's happening to him. He wasn’t even imagining Robin then, just Tim. “You—what was the question again?”

“Nevermind, let’s just get started," Tim says, putting one of the discs in. "Did you bring your drawings?"

Kon digs in his bag for the spiral notebook he filled over the last few days as Tim presses play. "Let's see yours first."

Tim lays out loose sheets pulled out of his pad, covered in sketches of spires and castles. Some of the lines veer off into wobbly squiggles, like Tim nodded off still clutching a marker. A few of the blocky shapes bear a distinct resemblance to Wayne Manor.

'Do I believe the sky above
Is Carribean Blue…'

"This one's pretty good," Kon says, picking up one sheet and looking at the dark lonely tower. Then he stares at the picture underneath. "... isn't that the Daily Planet?"

Tim blinks and looks down at the page again—the globe of the Planet at an angle only helicopters and Supers can see it from, with the moon behind it and deft cross hatching showing its gentle gleam on the old bronze. "Oh."

"That's not Gotham, dude."

"Yeah, uh…maybe I was…watching the news? I don't actually remember drawing a lot of this."

"You don't say. Anyway, here's mine."

Kon sets his notebook on the table and pushes it towards Tim, who starts flipping through the pages. He started out drawing the tower and everything, but pretty soon he just got excited about the dragons, so half of his drawings are just winged lizards in various dramatic poses.

He leans on the table and looks over Tim's shoulder, hearing his heart speed up a little. Kon moves over an inch or two, not wanting to stress him out while he's still recovering. "Do you think we might be able to rig up some lights in its mouth or something?"

"Probably…we can put a battery pack inside the base of the tower. It'll help the balance, anyway."

"Sweet."

"I…" Tim's breath hitches a little. "Let's use this one," he says quickly, folding the notebook over and setting it next to the tower sketch Kon picked out. "They look good together, right?"

"Yeah…" Kon tilts his head and lifts the glasses up for a moment, trying to picture the two images combined and three-dimensional. "Yeah, that could look really good." He puts the glasses back on as Tim turns to look at him. "Mind if I use your pad?"

"Knock yourself out." Tim grabs a marker laying by the boombox and tosses it to him.

"Okay, so, if we're taking that tower and my dragon…" Kon flips to a new sheet on Tim's larger drawing pad and lays out sketchy lines until the two ideas slowly combine, the dragon's wings outstretched and its claws wrapped possessively—or perhaps protectively—around the building.

"Oh, that's nice," Tim says thoughtfully. He's spinning another marker in one hand, head tilted. Kon feels a strange flicker of something—that angle, that pose—

The stereo keeps playing quietly in the background.

'You go there you're gone forever
I go there I lose my way
We stay here we're not together
Anywhere is…'

He's really losing it over Robin if he's seeing his shadow in every dark-haired boy who's nice to him.

"The tower could be like…" Tim shugs and waves his hands vaguely, and the flicker is gone. "Burton-y-er."

Kon scribbles over the edges of the tower until it's a pile of tilted, twisted floors clinging to balance. "We are making this so much harder on ourselves," he points out.

"Yeah, but it looks cool," Tim says, spinning the pen again. "Dragon needs bigger wings."

Kon makes a few broad strokes to extend the wings until they resemble a bat-like cape. "Happy now?"

"Getting closer." Tim spreads a pile of scenic photos across one end of the table. "I figure we'll cover the tower with these." He holds up a shot of the harbor bridge and squints at it. "Or…not these, because they're in color and we should probably be going monochrome here. But you get the idea."

"Yeah, that'll be great. Maybe we can use some fabric for the bat wings so it's not too heavy…"

"Alfred might have an old umbrella. What was the size limit in the instructions again?" Tim picks up a roll of wire from the floor and starts twisting interlocking loops.

Kon checks the slightly crumpled assignment sheet. "Two feet cube."

"There's a yardstick in here somewhere…"

Slowly, they put together a wire framework to serve as a rough prototype of their plan. Tim twists and bends the wire into place, and Kon tapes paper over them until a vague outline of the tower and dragon take shape.

His hand lands on Tim's as he wraps a piece of tape around the dragon's body. Tim's eyes flick to his sharply, like he's expecting something. Kon can't pull his gaze away from Tim's eyes: under the spare bulbs lighting the shed, he can see that the bright blue isn't as eerily even and test tube-perfect as Kon's own, but softened with streaks of darker green and a wedge of brown in his left iris.

'Cursum perficio,
Cursum perficio...'

"Kelly?" Tim blinks—very slowly, or maybe Kon's perception is speeding up. His breathing sounds very loud all of a sudden.

Someone knocks on the door of the shed. "Anybody order snacks?"

Kon snatches his hands back. "You should get that."

Tim sighs, but doesn't hesitate to walk over and open the door. "What's on the menu?"

He tries to grab the tray out of Dick's hands while blocking the door, but Dick gracefully spins around him, holding the tray over his head as he slips past Tim. "So what are you crazy kids getting up to in here? Build any time machines? Let's clear some space, this is heavy—"

Tim dives past him to scoop photos out of the way as Dick sets down a tray piled with sandwiches on one side and half of a dense chocolate Bundt cake on the other.

"Oh hey! Is this you guys' little project? That's cute…"

Tim throws Kon a helpless look, wrinkling his nose in a way that makes his soft dusting of freckles even more prominent. "Sorry about him, embarrassing me is his one joy in life before he goes to the Rest Home For Eighties Haircuts…" As Dick ruffles his hair, Tim bounces on the balls of his feet, as if he’s about to jump up and throw his arms around Dick’s neck to hang there. Then he catches himself, his hands tensing.

"Aw, love you too bro…"

Tim rolls his eyes, but when Dick grabs him in a quick side hug he relaxes for a moment, puts his own arm around Dick's waist and rests his head against his shoulder like he's never felt safer.

Kon feels strange looking at them, a weird pull like he's suddenly standing behind glass again watching the human sitcom families on TV, knowing he could never hope of having the same experience.

But there's warmth radiating from them all the same—maybe he's not quite included, but he's happy to be allowed to watch.

Chapter Text

"God, can you imagine living in Metropolis? How do they survive?"

Kon stares at Hudson blankly. "What do you mean?" he mumbles around a mouthful of the sandwich he made that morning. Technically he made four sandwiches, and he's currently on number three (tuna and bacon) after trading half of number two (ham and cheddar) to Ives for a white chocolate chip cookie.

"Yeah, like, the sun is out? Every day?" Ives shudders dramatically. "I visit my dad on weekends, that's some freaky shit."

Tim laughs into his coffee as Hudson launches into a speech everyone at the nerd table has clearly heard before. Kon likes hearing him laugh—he's glad he seems to be springing back from the fear gas accident without complications, even if he still seems tired all the time. And of course he dove right back into his caffeine habit the moment he wasn't under immediate threat of hospitalization.

"Right, right, that's what I keep saying! If there's no cloud cover the man-bats can see you a mile away! Where are we supposed to hide?" Hudson waves his hands, forgetting he's still holding a forkload of pasta, and Jen yelps and leans out of the way of a spray of sauce. “Sorry!”

“The…the what now? Sorry, what?” Kon asks, even more confused.

“Man-bats, dude, don’t you watch the news?”

“I thought it was the other way around…?” Robin never told him anything about…Man-bats.

But then Kon’s starting to realize Robin doesn’t tell him much of anything about Gotham at all.

“No, that’s Batman,” Tim lowers his thermos long enough to say.

“I saw on Geocities that Batman was the first man-bat and he created all the others but they turned against him so that's why he became Batman.”

“Not that theory again, Hudson!” Ives scoffs.

“What, it explains like everything!”

Ives holds up a finger as he swallows a bite of Kon’s sandwich. “What about Robin, huh? Sure, Batman’s not normal but that’s a real human kid.”

“That’s what he wants you to think—”

Jen interrupts as Hudson raises his voice. "Robin's cute! I saw him up close when Clayface took the mall hostage and he ran right past me without the cape. He has nice legs. But, like, Nightwing, though, with the black spandex—"

“Anyway! I thought Metropolis was pretty okay when we went for Math Bowl,” Tim announces. "Somebody back me up here."

"Wow, somebody really doesn't want the truth out there about Robin." Jen folds her arms. "Way to keep women down, Tim."

"I also think Metropolis is nice," Kon says, because no matter how much he agrees with them it’s way too awkward having to listen to someone else talk about how hot they think his maybe-boyfriend is. Tim also looks uncomfortable, probably because he’s too straight for the whole conversation, which is really his loss.

Hudson waves a hand dismissively. "Right, and you're from, like, Indiana or something, right?"

"Missouri, actually, not that anyone has ever asked me," Kon says a little tartly, because he and Tana did actually put some effort into the backstory of their secret identities. “Small town. Near Central.”

"Whatever. You'd be impressed by anywhere that had buildings over ten stories." From what Kon has seen of Wally West, this is a correct impression, but he still tries to look offended as Jen laughs.

Ives shrugs. "Yeah, I mean, Metro's pretty if you're a tourist but who would want to live there? It's all...clean."

“Have we maybe considered that Gotham is the outlier here?” Kon says, but nobody is listening to him. “Apparently not.”

"Something's seriously wrong with a place that clean. Freakin' creepy." Hudson nods firmly.

"It just means someone here's embezzling from the sanitation department," Kon grumbles (this is one of Robin's frequent complaints) and is again ignored.

"Exactly!" Ives fist-bumps Hudson and grabs one of his fries as he pulls his hand back.

"And!" Jen raps the table. "And! The music scene is terrible. I have a cousin in Metropolis, do you know what she plays in? A ska band. Sickening."

"Now that I'll agree with," Kon says as he pushes his chair back. "But right now I think there's a quiz in American History with me and Tim's names on it."

"Oh cripes." Tim chugs the rest of his coffee and shoves empty containers into his lunchbox. "I forgot."

"Never would have guessed."
……

The test goes…well, it certainly goes. Kon really tried to study over the weekend, and Tim lets him look at his notes before the class starts, though he doesn’t get much out of it since Tim writes like a pharmacist who just drank a full pot of coffee (and one of those things is definitely true). 

But if he does end up getting anything right in the end, it's not thanks to his attempts to remember facts about the Ohio land rush but to the brief flashes of cold Luthor-logic letting him estimate which order the correct choices were likely to appear in.

After the test ends he has to put his head down on the desk and take deep breaths for a minute, hoping he won't start dry-heaving again.

“...Clark? Kelly Clark?”

He jumps, enough that he feels the plastic seat crack a little underneath him, and stares up at the teacher. "Yes! Miss Liu. Kelly, that's me…"

“Are…you okay?”

“Uh." Kon tries to smile, but it feels strained. "The, like, the horrors of Manifest Destiny were getting to me.” This is also true—he could almost feel Luthor’s smug speeches about superiority scraping at his mind.

"I can give you a hall pass if you need the nurse."

"I—yeah, sure…thanks."

He doesn't go to the nurse, of course. As he walks through the hall to get to the courtyard, he stops outside the nurse's office long enough to find her signature in a ledger with x-ray vision and reproduce it on the hall pass. The teacher is too busy to check into it as long as nobody finds him and starts asking questions.

It's still cold outside, but a little warmer than last week, not that it makes much difference to Kon one way or the other. The frozen fountain is finally melting, turning half of the inner yard into a huge swath of sticky mud that Jen and her friends have stomped a ritual pentagram into, then ceremonially staked a deflated football in the center.

Kon sits on the bottom step of the covered porch and puts his chin in his hands, watching a few crows fighting over a half-eaten sandwich next to a trash can.

“Thinking deep thoughts?”

Kon jumps, then looks up and sees Tim perched on the porch railing. “Geez, way to sneak up on a guy.”

“Have to move quiet at my house or Dick will start smothering me with affection,” Tim says with a shrug. “He’s got enough stuff of his own to deal with but I’m the one that needs protecting, apparently.” 

Because it’s so shocking anybody might be worried about you lately, Kon thinks, but doesn’t say it, since Tim finally seems to be back to his usual self and Kon doesn’t want to be the one to remind him what happened.

“And then Bruce is still very excited about the whole parenting thing, so I have to sneak past his office if I don’t want to get dragged into a Brady Bunch fantasy. I’ve tried to explain to him that I don’t want to play catch in the yard, but…”

Kon waves towards the mud patch and the sacrificed football. “Have you tried joining Jen’s coven? That might get the point across.”

Tim laughs and shakes his head. “Strict dress code, I look terrible in crushed velvet so I decided not to return after my first meeting. Besides, I hate staying up late and all their ceremonies are at midnight.”

Kon tries to picture Tim in the clingy forest green stretch velvet top and studded choker Jen wore to school that day. The result he comes up with isn’t what he’d call terrible, but Tim doesn’t look like that’s what he wants to hear right now. 

“How’s your tower coming?” he asks instead. Tim’s schedule is unpredictable because of family demands on his time, so rather than trying to force time for meetings, in the early stages of the project Tim is constructing the tower at Wayne Manor and Kon is sculpting the dragon in the basement of Tana’s friend’s inherited fixer-upper between rounds of cleaning.

“I got the batteries working in the base so we’re all set for lighting up the dragon once we put it on. Now I can finally start doing the walls. How about the dragon?”

“I found a lot of stuff I can use for it, so I’m just kind of experimenting right now,” Kon replies. 

Some of the students who had lived in the house before Kon must have been art majors, because between rounds of trashing the place they’d left a ton of half-finished multimedia projects and leftover materials in the basement and office, including a box of leather scraps he’s molding over a more detailed wire frame. There was even a taxidermy raven under the bathroom sink—or what used to be the bathroom sink, since Kon shattered it when he opened the cabinet underneath at 2am and saw glittering eyes 

Luckily another student abandoned a pile of home improvement manuals so he’s pretty sure he knows how to replace it, but he needs to think of a good story before he can let Steph inside again.

“Need any help with it?” Tim asks.

Kon hesitates. He isn’t sure he wants to let Tim inside the house, ever, not after seeing Wayne Manor. But…Tim already tried so hard not to make Kon think he was comparing their situations, even if it led to Kon nearly dying of shock when he realized what the situation in question was.

“I…yeah, that’d be great,” Kon says. “I’m okay for now, but I think covering the wings will be a two-man job.”

“Sure thing,” Tim says as the bell rings for the end of their History period, then jumps off the railing to land with a muddy squelch on the lawn below. “I’m meeting debate club during this free period, and then I have to head right home after school because Dad insisted on having dinner together, but I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“Yeah, see you,” Kon replies, and watches Tim jog across the lawn for a moment, his soft dark hair whipping in the cold wind. Then he sighs and gets out his Chemistry textbook.

Kon is still a little on edge from the history exam, making Chemistry, which he thought he was mostly used to, almost unbearable. Luckily today’s only lectures and the teacher doesn’t try to make them do any activities or worksheets, so Kon slouches into the back and hides behind his propped-up composition book until it’s all over. 

Clarissa, who must have an after-school date since she’s also sitting in the back painting her nails lime green, gives him a few weird looks but doesn’t rat him out. Maybe he’s getting somewhere with her: she’s been less mean than usual in Spanish, and even said last class that she ‘wouldn’t, like, vomit if we were in a skit group together.’

He raises his eyebrows at her. Xander? He mouths.

She promptly flips him off.

Okay, so there’s a long way to go, but he’s still getting somewhere. Probably. 

On the way home he stops at the grocery store long enough to buy a couple cans of soup, which he cooks quickly with his heat vision before settling in front of the TV, floating comfortably a few inches above the floor.

He falls asleep halfway through a string of Sabrina reruns.

When he wakes up, it's dark. He sighs and runs his hands over his face, wondering what woke him up, before he hears the distant music with the distinctive slight buzz of Robin's earpiece. He follows it to the Batmobile and the sounds of the Bats' conversation.

Robin's listening to moody alt rock again, Nirvana or Pearl Jam or something. Kon can't make it out clearly enough to hear the lyrics because once he latches on to the right spot Robin's music is nearly drowned out by a much louder speaker that he must be sitting next to.

‘And nothing really rocks, and nothing really rolls,
And nothing’s ever worth the cost—’

“No!” Robin yells, sounding horrified as he clicks his own music off.

“Oh my god, B!” Nightwing shouts at the same time.

Kon has never known Batman’s cold growl to sound uncertain. “Is this not…”

“It’s not!” Robin replies. “It’s not cool!”

“Tell me you’re not playing Meat Loaf over the external speakers. Batman.” Nightwing’s voice is slightly muffled, as if he has his gloved hands over his face.

Robin sighs, sounding agonized. “He is. He is actually playing Bat Out of Hell. From the Batmobile. This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me and I have almost died seven times, low estimate.”

Kon agrees that this is a very low estimate. Maybe he's counting the whole Luthor situation as once.

“I’m quitting," Nightwing declares. "I’m going back to the Titans and I’m quitting this whole family.”

“I’m joining you. How…how could you be so old, B?”

“There was a new album last year…”

“Oracle, tell him. Maybe he’ll listen to reason from you.”

Another voice breaks in over the speakers, cutting through the gravelly vocals. “B, I really hate to break it to you, but this might be worse than Journey." The voice is smooth and even-pitched, as if it's coming through a modulator—Kon can't even tell if it's a human voice—but there's still a playful tone to the words. 

They sound tired, though. Everyone in the car sounds tired.

"But you two used to love being in the car and—"

"Yeah, well, news flash, I'm no longer freaking twelve, I don't need to sit in the back of the Batmobile, and Batgirl doesn't exist any more."

It's very weird to hear Nightwing shouting. Robin makes a small noise and Kon suddenly feels like he shouldn't be listening to this at all. But he can't make himself stop.

And what was that about Batgirl? Kon only talked to her once, at the verdict party, but she seemed fun, and Nightwing was obviously wild about her. The kids on the bus said she quit…

"Nightwing! I was talking!"

Nightwing lets out a slow soft sigh. "Sorry, sorry. Carry on, Oracle…"

"Look, we just want to help you, B, let us help you. I actually really like this industrial thrash math grunge noise band from Liechtenstein…”

“Wha—When did you all decide this? What do those words mean? Who doesn’t like Journey?”

“Anyone remotely cool,” Robin groans. “Oh god, I can’t be seen with you tonight. Nightwing—”

“My thoughts exactly, new partner. Let’s go.”

"It can't go worse than last time." High-torque tires screech to a stop as the Batmobile door opens. “See you in the morning!” Robin yells over the wind.

“Have…fun,” Batman calls after them, framing the last word tentatively as if it's an alien substance. Knowing Batman, it probably is. (But Kon never had any idea he liked any music, let alone Meat Loaf, so who's he to say he knows Batman?) Then, fainter: “...Journey isn’t cool any more?”

After Robin and Nightwing leave the Batmobile, Kon loses track of them, since Robin still has his music off and he can’t figure out where to aim his hearing with the roar of the Batmobile engine distracting him.

It's a little before midnight and Kon doesn't want to actually go to bed just yet, so he gets a couple cans of paint out of the basement, turns the TV back on to Cat Grant's cooking show (it’s not very popular with general audiences because Cat is terrible at cooking, but Kon watches every week when he’s not filming or doing Super stuff), and starts working on the kitchen trim.

Even after completing just a few sections, it's amazing the difference the bright white trim makes. The place is really starting to look like a real house, at least on the inside. The outside is definitely going to need way more help. It's not that he couldn't afford it, and with his abilities he could replace all the siding overnight, but such a sudden, dramatic improvement might attract more attention than he wants.

He'll have to plan strategically, so the work doesn't go too fast and he isn't seen doing absolutely everything by himself.

It would be so much easier if he could ask Robin about it. Robin would have the whole thing planned out with charted schedules down to the minute, to make sure he was working as efficiently as possible without anything looking out of the ordinary to anyone else in the neighborhood. But if he admits what was going on to Robin now, after snooping as much as he has…

Kon realizes he might have taken things a little too far.

Around three seconds after this realization, he hears a jumble of sound from the deserted apartment block.

"Robin!" Nightwing shouts.

"I'm on him, I'm good!"

“Wait!”

He can hear them without needing his powers, though he can't see anything when he climbs on the counter and pushes the faded beach towel serving as a curtain aside (he's going to fix that, if he has time to figure out sewing).

Then he hears a familiar scraping sound—the sound of Robin's boots hitting the edge of a roof and failing to catch.

"Robin!"

Before he can even think about what he's doing, Kon is outside on the sidewalk. The door bangs closed behind him as Robin hits the ground with a gasp and an audible pop.

"Shit," Robin wheezes, and Kon stops just around the corner from the sound instead of bolting into the alley. He crouches and peeks cautiously around the corner.

Robin rolls over and into a crouch. His shoulders are slumped oddly under the cloak pooling around him, and his mouth is set tight. He's clutching his left shoulder under the cape: Kon's x-rays flick on instinctively and he winces, cringing a little as he imagines what it might feel like to have his joint pulled out of place in the same way. He's felt pain before, of course: he can bruise with a hard enough hit, and then there was the searing burn when the other clone nearly took his eyes out. Not to mention what went on in Luthor's labs, though he's gotten pretty good at not thinking about that.

But Kon was built to take it. The internal injuries he keeps watching Robin take make him feel sick.

"He's down." Nightwing drops next to Robin. "Next street over. What happened? That was an easy jump."

Robin shrugs, then almost doubles over. "Ow, cripes…I don't know. There's a lot going on lately. Distracted."

Nightwing kicks one of the chunks of concrete surrounding Robin. "That's sure not up to code, either. Need a hospital?” 

Robin shakes his head. “It's not that bad, quit worrying about me. You'll get yourself—”

“You’re sure you're okay?”

“Yeah, you go, I’m good.”

Nightwing hesitates, fingers of one hand fluttering against his elbow as he folds his arms, then he sighs. “If you say so. I'm going to take in our guy, so you go call for a ride, alright? Get home and get that looked at."

"Will do," Robin says, taking the hand Nightwing holds out, though he puts very little weight on him as he pulls himself up.

Nightwing starts to reach for Robin's shoulder, stops himself when Robin flinches minutely, then gives his hair a light pat with one gloved hand before vanishing around the corner.

Kon's x-ray is still working—as he pushes it down he catches a quick glimpse of what looks like metal mesh inside the suit. Or: maybe inside Nightwing? But by the time he realizes what he's seen and tries to get another look Nightwing is already gone.

Robin waits, listening, as Kon hears Nightwing pick up their target and fire a grappling line. Precisely eight seconds after Nightwing lands on another roof a block away, Robin reaches up, calmly pops his shoulder back into place, then hisses and drops to one knee.

"What the fuck," Kon blurts out as Robin drops to one knee. Then he remembers how close he is.

Robin whips to his feet and turns, an R-star flicking into his hand. “Who’s there?” he snaps, but it’s only a second at most before the lenses of the mask settle on Kon’s face. He lowers the weapon but his shoulders are still taut. “You again.”

Kon stands and steps slowly into the open. “Hi,” he says. “Are you okay?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I live here. Are you okay?” Kon repeats.

"You shouldn't get so close, kid," Robin says, as if he isn’t also a kid. "You'll get hurt."

"Yeah, well, what about you?"

Robin shrugs, then hisses again. Kon tries to hide a wince as he hears his shoulder making a noise that shoulders are definitely not supposed to normally make. 

"'m fine," Robin says after a few seconds of rapid breathing, in a tight garbled tone that communicates pretty much the opposite thing. "Go home, it's a school night."

"What, and it's not for you?"

Robin draws himself up taller, and Kon would have been impressed if he didn't know the next words out of his mouth were a blatant lie. "Robins don't need school."

"Do Robins need ice? I have ice."

Robin wavers, then the lenses of the mask narrow. "I'm fine. We talked about you being on the streets at night last time, remember?"

Kon smiles hopefully. "My parents aren't home?"

Robin claps a hand to his mask.

"So…does this happen a lot?" Kon asks as he leads Robin around the block, moving with what feels to him like agonizing slowness because he doesn't want Robin to jar his injured shoulder.

"Following civilians home?"

"Uh, no, dude, I meant the shoulder thing. Freakin' gnarly."

"It's happened," Robin says, his voice hitching a little as he takes a step. "But that's not why I'm here, okay, I’m only walking you home because I see it as my civic duty. Don’t think you can make this into some groupie thing," he continues as Kon rolls his eyes. "You just have no idea how to survive in Gotham and I can’t let you basically walk around with a sign saying ‘please human traffic me’—do you not lock your doors."

Kon blinks and turns, holding the door open. For a moment, Robin's deep voice had dropped away, pitching up into startled concern. “Not when I don't need to, I was thirty seconds away and a bunch of Bats were right there, I didn't see the point—”

“Oh my god where are you from that they don’t lock their doors.”

“M…issouri. Do you want that ice?”

Robin pauses on the step below the doorway. Kon takes a step back so he isn't crowding the opening.

"...fine," Robin says finally. "But don't think this means anything."

This definitely isn't a good time for Kon to expose himself. Robin's had a rough night already and especially with his injury Kon doesn't want to give him another shock.

Still, at least he's finally talking to Robin again. Kon's so thrilled at getting another chance that he has trouble remembering to keep his feet on the floor as he opens the freezer.

One of the things Kon has learned about being human is that, in most non-Super households, there is The Designated Sacred Bag Of Frozen Peas. Lois, especially, goes through frozen peas like…something that eats a lot of frozen peas. Ducks, Kon remembers from some of Clark's farm stories. Ducks do that. 

And, okay, his are lima beans, not peas, because the grocery store was out of peas that day, but he has them, because he is just winning at this human thing. Who knows when Steph might drop something on his head again? He has to be prepared to make it look realistic.

Robin looks at the wobbly dining table, then leans against the kitchen counter. His head turns as he looks around the space—Kon glances over his shoulder, trying to read his expression, but besides the pained set of his mouth (which makes him look very sexy and kissable) there's not much to go by.

Kon tosses the peas towards Robin. He catches them with his good hand. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Kon replies. It feels too awkward to just stand there so he picks up the small can of paint that he left on the counter and starts back to work on the trim, trying to look like a normal human boy who is acting like everything is normal and has Bat sidekicks who he isn't romantically involved with in any way shape or form in his house every other day.

Robin slides the peas under his cape then sighs softly, an almost sensuous sound of relief. Kon slips with the brush, streaking white away from the trim and across the dingy wall.

So much for reacting normally. He sighs and drops the brush back into the can, then turns back to Robin. "So, so uh, do you want a drink or anything? There's some Coke in the fridge, Diet Pepsi, uh…oh, there's some Jolt I got for Tim, you wouldn't know Tim, he's just a kid from school, we're doing a project together so I got it just in case…"

"I—no, I'm fine," Robin snaps. "I shouldn't have stayed this long." He tosses the peas on the table.

Maybe it was a bad idea to mention Tim. "Geez, at least have a can of Pepsi or something before you run out on me, come on." Kon starts to open the fridge, but before he can do more than touch the handle he feels movement behind him. He turns, putting his back to the fridge just as Robin braces his arm against the door next to his face.

Kon takes a sharp breath in. He hasn't been this close to Robin in months. He can feel his heart speeding up as he stares through his glasses at the mask, so loud he expects Robin to be able to hear it.

For several seconds, they only look at each other. Robin's looking down on him: the toes of his shoes are braced in the gap between the fridge door and the freezer drawer. It gives him about a foot over Kon's eye level, and puts him at the perfect angle for Kon to stare at his mouth when he speaks.

"How old are you?"

"What does that—how old are you?"

"Old enough to know that this kind of thing isn't going to end well. I'm not like you. We can't be close. We can't be friends. I don't know what you're picturing, but it's not safe."

The words only sink in vaguely, since Kon is far more occupied with how much he wants to kiss him right now. Maybe he's only so obsessed with Robin's mouth because he doesn't know what the rest of his face looks like, but it's also objectively just a really nice mouth.

Especially now, his lips parted just a little to make a tempting curve.

"I feel pretty safe right now," Kon says, and it comes out considerably more breathy than he intended.

Robin shakes his head, then winces again. "Bad things happen to people who get close to Bats, okay? I didn't decide that, but there's nothing I can do about it."

Kon starts to open his mouth, but Robin keeps going before he can say anything.

"Like—okay, let me frame this in a way you might understand. Don't you remember what happened to the lady in Speed?'

"Uh…she jumped a bus over a freeway and then made out with Keanu Reeves a lot? Like, a lot?" Kon was watching Speed basically on a loop during the last few days of the trial—he should probably pay Lois back for the VHS he wore out one of these days. "Like, oh no, hope none of that ever happens to me, complete turn-off."

Robin blinks behind the mask.

"Um." Robin's tongue brushes lightly across his lips and Kon can't look away. 

Robin's heart is speeding up now, catching up with Kon's, and for a moment Kon can imagine the next few perfect seconds—Robin leaning down to meet his mouth, Kon wrapping his arms around his waist to hold him up. Then Kon remembers who Robin thinks he's talking to, and it sinks in how many new problems he might have just made for himself if he doesn't come clean right now.

"That—I had a different point—I should go."

"Robin—Robin, wait, I need to tell you somethi—"

Before Kon can get more than the first two words out, Robin flips away and through the front door, with only a last flicker of the yellow lining across the street before he vanishes into the dark.

Kon slides slowly down the fridge until he's sitting on the dirty linoleum. He puts his chin in his hands. "This is what I would call a pretty un-slamming situation." He can still feel the echoes of how amazing it felt to have Robin almost pressed against him, before he ran and left Kon in the cold kitchen alone. "Literally."

The next morning before school, Kon is trying to look normal while he and Hudson are comparing notes on the staircase overlooking the parking lot.

"God, you're a lifesaver on this science stuff," Hudson says. "Gram always starts worrying when my grades slip, but you're like a walking lab!"

"Yeah, that's me, Captain Test Tube," Kon laughs weakly. “I think you flipped something in that unit conversion, shouldn’t the cubic centimeters be on top?”

“Crap, you’re right…saving my life again…”

Luckily Hudson has to run inside to talk to some of his sports teammates, so Kon is saved any more on that topic. Kon is just starting to get up and head into the building himself when a familiar engine purrs into the parking lot. Kon turns to watch as Dick Grayson's car pulls up at the bottom of the stairs. Tim sometimes gets picked up, but Kon's never seen him get dropped off before.

Dick gets out first, and Kon waves down the stairs at him. "Good morning!"

Dick waves, then walks around the front of the car to open Tim's door.

"You don't have to make a whole production out of it, geez," Tim whispers at Dick.

"If I think it will make you be more careful next time I will carry you up the damn stairs," Dick retorts.

"You wouldn't."

"Want me to prove it?"

"No, fine, fine…"

Kon jogs a few steps down the stairs as Tim climbs stiffly out of the car. As he turns, Kon sees the bright red cast around his forearm, strapping his left arm firmly against a bleach-washed Gotham U sweater.

Kon runs the rest of the way down the stairs, leaning on the other side of the car. Once again, seeing Tim hurt wipes out any thought of his own problems. "Oh my god, dude, are you okay? What happened?"

Dick hands Tim his backpack and watches Tim sling it awkwardly over his good shoulder. "He fought the stairs and the stairs won," he says, ruffling Tim's hair.

Tim rolls his eyes and wiggles his fingers in the cast as he walks around the car to join Kon. "It's just a fracture, Dick's only panicking because he's the one who threw me down the stairs."

"It was a banister sliding competition!" Dick protests.

"Did you hear something? I didn't. But I'll be fine by the end of the month."

Dick shakes his head scornfully, but his smile is fond, if a bit tired, as he climbs back in the car. "Call the house if you need anything, Dad's away for the week but me or Alfred can sign you out of school."

Tim Vulcan salutes with his good hand as the car pulls away, and Dick returns the gesture out the window.

"You sure you don't need help?" Kon asks once Dick is out of sight, thinking his brother not being in earshot might make him more honest.

"I'm fine," Tim repeats, and heads up the stairs. "Wait, actually—"

"Yeah?"

"Can you open a can for me? I have Jolt in my backpack but I didn't want to ask Dick…" He gestures at the backpack's side pocket.

"Anything for a friend," Kon says cheerfully, and grabs for the zipper.

"Sure," Tim says, his voice suddenly pained. Kon quickly lets go of the backpack after grabbing the can. He was trying not to use his strength but he still must have been pulling too hard for Tim's injuries. "Friend."

Chapter Text

After how complicated Kon's made his life on Gotham, it's almost a relief to meet Tana in Europe again that weekend, even if he was in the final stages of painting the kitchen trim. GBS' insurance won't actually let him behind the wheel even after Tana spends twenty minutes explaining the whole invulnerability thing, but cruising down the Autobahn still feels amazing. Flying is fun but Kon’s always enjoyed the powerful surge of a luxury car, and the F1 driver really knows how to make the most of the roads. 

And after that is a tour of some cliff side castle that Kon enjoys mainly because Tana is so excited about it, and they finish up playing soccer with some local kids who are adorably unimpressed—the Superboy brand hasn't caught on on the continent just yet. Yes, Superman's death was described in American media as a worldwide calamity. But a lot of people in Europe had enough going on in their own countries that they didn't even know it happened until he was already back, so announcing himself as Superman’s no-longer-replacement just gets a lot of friendly but slightly confused shrugs.

On his way back, he decides to keep the suit on and swing by Metropolis before sneaking into Gotham. Even if he's technically staying in Europe for the next several weeks, since he can fly several times faster than the speed of sound it would still be strange if he completely vanished from Metropolis without popping up once or twice because he forgot his toothbrush or something. Lois might notice that he's more absent than she'd otherwise expect and start wondering if he's hiding out for a reason.

Lois and Clark are out of town this weekend (she bragged about their new investigation feature in Colorado to Tana, who mentioned it when Kon arrived in Germany), so it's the perfect opportunity to prove he's totally not hiding while also avoiding any questions about what he's been up to lately.

"Hey, Olsen!" Kon calls as he swoops through an open window into the newsroom. 

Jimmy waves and jogs up the stairs as Kon perches on the railing overlooking the main space. They've never talked a ton, but they keep running into each other when Kon is helping Clark as Superman, and Jimmy sometimes jokingly tries to recruit him for the Daily Planet Interns Vs Journalists Football Game. 

Everyone else stares, so Kon knows everyone who's ever worked for media in Metropolis will know he's been sighted by the end of the afternoon. Luthor will probably know by Monday at the latest: he always seems to have sources, even in prison.

"Lois around?" Kon waves the armful of souvenirs and luxury European chocolates. He figures Lois and Clark will know to split it up among themselves, so on his flight across Europe he picked up a ton of stuff he knew they’d both like. Somewhere in the pile are matching scarves for the soccer club Clark started following after stopping an alien attack on a Belgian stadium, fancy engraved Italian silver pens for Lois to show off with when she takes notes at society functions, and a snowglobe of the Eiffel Tower that he’s sure will get passed on to the Smallville Kents eventually. 

"You just missed her, she flew to Boulder this morning with Clark." Kon isn’t sure how to interpret the way Jimmy says the name. After all, Jimmy doesn’t know that Clark is Superman…unless he does. A lot of weird crap happens to Jimmy and Kon honestly tries not to think about it.

"Darn." Even though he was planning for that, Kon knows the disappointment on his face isn't fake. He might have started this scheme partially to get away from their exhausting sappiness, but after not seeing them for so long he's starting to miss even that.

"You want to leave a note? I can put the stuff on her desk."

Jimmy ferries the presents to Lois' desk in three trips, then brings Kon a Daily Planet memo pad.

He isn't sure what to write, especially since the note is definitely going to be read by the whole office. Miss you! Enjoy the stuff! he finally scrawls, adding an S-shield and a capital B in parentheses next to it.

"Feel free to raid the food if you think it'll go bad before she gets back," he tells Jimmy as he flies back up to the window. "See you!"

"You know where to find me if you change your mind about the game!" Jimmy yells after him.

With Clark in Colorado and Kara commuting back and forth from Smallville for her classes, Metro is mostly Super-free today. Both Clark or Kara could make it over in seconds if there was a real emergency, but Kon decides to make a couple quick rounds just to confirm everything's shipshape.

The city’s quiet, for once. Kon cruises slowly by the waterfront, looking down at the hotels and noting some of the newer sections of wall from repairs after his fight with the clone. The opera house where they met that first night still has a few singe marks on the sweeping curve of the roof, and if he looks straight down the broad street he can see the LexBank central building. 

It’s not LexBank any more. naturally—there was a brisk shareholder takeover after the arrest and a name change came with it. Now it’s Lord Financial, which is…more of a lateral change than anything, if it’s actually a change at all and not a scam Lex and Lord are running together. Either way, the dent where he slammed into the roof is still there. And a few yards away, the spot where he knelt next to Robin, trying to see through the black murk eating into his vision to make sure the only person who treated him as more than a replaceable Super-toy hadn’t just been blown to pieces by a malfunctioning Kryptonite weapon.

He’s certain Robin wouldn’t stop caring about him, no matter what happened between him and ‘Kelly’. Even if he found out about what happened between Kon and Tim. He just wishes Robin would talk to him. Sure, he might be worried about getting close to people, but Kon isn’t a people, exactly. He’d be fine. He has been fine, until now. 

And Robin used to see that, Kon thinks, but judging by the conversations he’s overheard between the Bats and how he acted in the house, something must have happened to scare him. And instead of discussing that fear, he's started walling himself off. From what Clark always has to say about his colleague across the bay, Robin's learned how to dodge emotional conversations from the best, so Kon's got his work cut out for him.

Kon starts to float up so he can fly north without anyone in Gotham seeing him, then catch a train down from Portland, Maine after changing into normal human clothes. And maybe getting a lobster sandwich somewhere because it’s been a long, long week.

Just as he’s getting focused on the upcoming seafood-based bliss, he hears something crackling behind him. Kon whips around in time to see electricity arcing between the stadium and the huge multi-story mall across the street.

“So much for my date with lobster destiny,” he sighs. “This looks like a job for Superboy.”

Kon streaks into superspeed and snaps into position just in front of the mall. 

“Okay, whoever you are, if you thought Superman was the only game in town that was your first mista—aaah!”

And just in time to take another arc of electricity to the chest, blasting him through a glass window on the third story. He can feel his sunglasses explode off his face before he even hits the glass.

Kon crashes through the window, across a walkway into the nearest restaurant and slams into a table. Momentum carries him further as it shatters under him, and he finally lands with a wet crunch in a tiny, shallow pond. 

The electricity courses through him again, intense enough to make him spasm under sizzling bolts that tear with burning cold under his skin. Once the lightning stops, leaving a jittery tingling feeling behind, he slowly rolls over and takes a deep breath, then flails backwards as he comes face-to-face with an alligator.

“What the…” Kon gasps, then the shock fades enough for him to see that it’s not a real alligator but a brightly painted animatronic. He looks around the room, at the fake-vine covered ceiling, the dark lighting and leaf patterned carpet underneath the round booths. Then he remembers doing a promotional event for Metropolis’ newest Rainforest Cafe, the only franchise in the Tristate area.

It’s early enough still that there aren’t many customers; a few booths at the side and a larger table in the back. One of the managers peeks around a fake tree at him and Kon waves as he picks himself up. “Hey, Rita.”

“Should we evacuate?”

“Not yet, they’re probably—” Kon shivers as residual electricity crackles under his skin again. “—probably safer where they are for now.”

He heads for the exit from the dining area to the mall walkway outside, hoping that he can move the fight away from the restaurant since animatronic elephants don’t come cheap. 

By this point, he’s pretty sure he knows who he’s dealing with, and while she’s not really bloodthirsty, she can make a mess if she’s pissed off. Which, since he won’t go out with her, she usually is.

Another bolt of electricity slams into the mall side sign and Kon stops between two empty tables.

The lightning bounces around the sign, swirling and crackling. Kon can feel his hair tingling with static as the electricity gathers, solidifying feet-up: black platform boots, denim miniskirt draped with studded pleather straps, hand painted AC/DC t-shirt, neon blue lipstick, eyes shimmering with electricity, and to top it all off jagged white hair still scattering sparks.

"Heeeeeeeeey people!" She beams and strikes a pose on the sign. "You've been—"

Kon folds his arms. "Thunderstruck, yeah, whatever. Hey, Wire."

"Kon-El!" Livewire gasps and waves. "Oh my gosh! Imagine running into you here! I thought it was your sister, I wouldn't have zapped you…"

Somehow, Livewire has got it in her head that the only obstacle between her and Kon living in bliss is Kara. Kon attempts to clarify that he also has opinions on this non-relationship every time they meet, but she just won't let it sink in.

"We are not on a Kryptonian name basis, Livewire."

"Fine," Livewire huffs. "Superboy."

"I don't feel like the air quotes were necessary."

"Ugh, nothing I do makes you happy!"

"You are, like, so close to getting it right now—"

"Oh my god," someone exclaims from a table behind Livewire. "Oh my god oh my god oh my god?"

Kon winces and puts a hand to his ear for a second as she reaches a really impressive frequency for a normal human. "Loud much?" He glances in that direction, or tries to, but Livewire promptly flickers directly in front of his face. He leans back as a stray spark hits his cheek. "Wire, can you not?"

The girl in the back keeps yelling. "Mom, Mom, oh my God—"

"Yes, Stephanie, honey, I see him—"

Wait, why is that voice fami—'Stephanie?'

Kon gets a closer look as Livewire crackles away to circle happily around the ceiling.

Steph—definitely the same Steph he knows from Gotham—is sitting in a booth across from an older woman with a similar shade of blond hair. Steph is wearing a Wonder Woman tiara from the Justice League merch store on the ground floor. Her mother (Kon is assuming from the matching World's Most Wonderful Mom crown) is holding a tissue-filled gift bag on her lap.

Both are staring at him.

"Uh. Hi."

"Oh my god—"

Steph looks about two seconds from launching herself out of the booth.

"Okay, people, let's just—stay calm here, I think we'll be out of here in a minute so just stay put—please stay put, miss—" Kon waves Steph down as she starts to climb on the back of the bench.

"Of all the times to leave my stuff at home," Steph grumbles under her breath as she drops back into her seat. "Mom, he spoke to me, oh my god, did you bring your camera?"

"Here, hon, I just changed the film too…"

Besides Steph's mom, he can hear and see more cameras flashing through the restaurant as Livewire lands in front of him again. At least it happened fast enough that there are no reporters on the scene yet—hopefully he can get this under control before they end up on a tabloid cover together.

"Look, Wire, what are you doing here? Somebody could have been hurt!"

"I just needed to drop by the ATM…"

Kon pinches the bridge of his nose. Clark does this a lot and he's beginning to discover why. "By ATM did you mean maybe the Metro Stadium box office." He saw signs for a Take That tour on the way in—if tickets went on sale today the amount of cash in the tills and vaults would have been huge.

"Mayyyyyyybe!" She giggles and leans closer, getting uncomfortably close to kissing range before Kon dodges back again.

Another camera goes off behind him and he growls with frustration, red flickering through his vision. "Can we not with the photos for a second!" he snaps, fists clenching.

Someone apologizes faintly among a circle of excited young heartbeats in the back but Livewire keeps talking over them.

"And then, like, oh my god, look who dropped by! Isn't this perfect? We can even go to the concert together, I knew you'd realize this thing between us meant more than—"

She moves in and Kon takes another step back, stopping as his boot hits the brick of the alligator pond.

“For heck’s sake, Livewire, we don’t have a thing! Cut it out!”

“We do so have a thing! You have a radio show! I live on the waves! That’s a thing!”

Kon floats up so he can scoot further back. “It’s not!”

Livewire pouts and floats up herself, her legs dissolving into energy as she flies. “I can’t believe you’d deny our thing…”

Kon groans and drags his hands through his hair. "Okay. So. Supposing we did have a thing, which we don't, don't you think that would mean you wouldn't want to cause problems for my brand, right?"

Sparks drip down her cheeks as she blinks. "I guess…?" She tilts her head.

“So, listen, speaking of that radio show, I’m actually supposed to be in Germany right now to record at Neu…Neuschwan…whatever the heck.” This is actually what he’s on his way back from already doing, but she wouldn't know that so it makes a perfect excuse.

“Neuschwanstein,” Steph yells from across the room.

“Thank you!” Kon points at her without looking away from Livewire. “That. So if you’re such a big fan, can we do this later? Unless you don't care about me…”

She sighs. “Fine, whatever…”

Before Kon can say anything else she disappears into a crackle of electricity. Kon’s hair tingles with static as she streaks off with a last call of "You'll admit to our thing eventuallyyyyyyyyyyyy…"

He swoops over to the sign and stares through the broken window. “Okay, see you, uh, not soon hopefully.” 

Maybe that isn’t fair—if he has to pick a Metro villain to tangle with, Livewire has to be in the top three. She mostly seems to do crime because she craves attention. Her unwanted powers already destroyed her career so it’s hard to be too angry with her, especially since she rarely causes much collateral damage and is usually easy to redirect. 

It’s just that she won’t take a hint. And while he used to flirt back before meeting Robin, for the last several months Kon has been giving a lot of hints that he isn’t really interested any more, and it’s starting to get kind of old.

Kon turns and shakes some glass out of his hair as he looks around the room. “I don’t know her,” he announces with a vague wave towards where Livewire disappeared. “Okay, show’s over, back to your regularly scheduled Jungle Fries...” he pauses as he looks past Steph to the table in the back where he heard the other camera. “So is all of Gotham at the Metro Centennial Mall today or what.”

At a large table in the back of the room are piles of food and presents, behind which is what must be the entire GCHS math bowl team: Tim, Ives, Jen, Hudson (apparently they roped him back into the fold at some point), four other kids Kon recognizes vaguely from the halls but doesn't know by name, and a few parents. No Bruce Wayne, thank heck.

All of them sit frozen, staring at him. Ives and Tim are still holding cameras.

“Oh my god how did he know we were from Gotham,” Hudson whispers.

Tim turns slowly and looks at him, face steadily deadpan. “Hud. Your shirt?”

Hudson looks down at his Gotham Knights jersey. “Oh.” 

"Yeah, man, that does not take the world's greatest detective," Ives laughs from the other end of the table.

Thank God for that excuse, Kon thinks, because he'd said it as soon as he recognized them without even thinking that Superboy would just see them as a few more random citizens. But even if they were random citizens and not classmates, there wasn't any call for Kon to lash out.

Kon flies up and flicks into a tiny burst of speed, landing in a perfect crouch on the table between two trays of pizza.

The awestruck gasps are very satisfying after a month in Gotham hearing everyone playfully ragging on their neighbor city. Even Tim's bright blue eyes fly wide as Kon makes a two-finger salute.

"Hey. Everybody okay?" It's hard not to hold eye contact with Tim, once their eyes meet, but he forces his gaze to skim across the table as if none of them stand out in particular. "Sorry for yelling at you guys. That wasn't fair to act like that just because Livewire was annoying me."

"You want us to get rid of the pictures."

Tim doesn't say it like a question. Kon’s head snaps towards him before he can think about the reaction. 

Tim sets the camera on the table between a few soda cups and nudges it into easy heat-vision range.

Kon recognizes the camera as one of Tim's favorites, the one he took on the museum trip. It's been through a lot, dented and scratched here and there, but he can still read the engraving he knows is on the back—For Timmy's 10th, love from J&J.

Kon reaches out slowly, because when you have super-strength, suddenly grabbing for people's stuff can scare them. Even when they've just practically invited you to destroy said stuff. 

A tiny muscle by Tim's mouth tenses as Kon touches the camera—the metal casing is still warm from his hand, and he can see the shinier sections where Tim's grip has polished it. Tim's heartbeat kicks up a little bit and his gaze drifts up to Kon's face, his blue eyes suddenly very wide in their frame of soft dark lashes. His hair is still a little mussed from the burst of wind when Kon landed.

Kon pushes the camera back across the table with two fingers—making sure he never actually grips it—and smiles at Tim. "Nah, don't worry about it, just maybe don't sell them to the papers, okay? You would not believe what they say sometimes."

It hurts smiling at Tim like this—sure, maybe he doesn't have a mask, but he still has to hide behind the S brand and his celebrity act. He wishes he could explain things to Tim, but like Robin is trying to explain to Kon, dragging him into the world of Supers would be too dangerous. With the vital difference that unlike 'Kelly', Tim actually is human, and definitely is very breakable. From the way he’s looking at Superboy, he clearly knows it, too.

And, selfishly, Kon doesn't want Tim to be afraid of him.

Tim smiles shyly back, the sudden bright expression drawing Kon's gaze to the warm curve of his mouth, and grabs the camera with his good hand. His eyes linger on Kon's for a long moment, until Kon tears himself away to change the subject.

"So like, whose birthday is it?"

Everyone at the table points at Jen, who is wearing a black-and-green party hat that someone has scribbled 'Birthday Witch' on in Sharpie. She waves weakly with a starstruck little laugh, and Kon tries not to look shocked. GCHS's number one Metro hater, really?

He leans in a little. One of the other girls at the table squeals. "Happy birthday."

"I—thanks—uh—" Jen flails for a second then grabs randomly for a plate and holds it out. "Do you want some onion rings!?"

"Oh my god, please, then I have to bounce…" Kon grabs a handful of onion rings off Jen's plate, then sees Ives holding up his camera again just in time to smile and make a peace sign next to Jen's birthday hat. "Okay, really gotta go now, enjoy your stay in our fine city of Metropolis I recommend the aquarium bye!" 

He zips out of the restaurant with a wave towards Steph so she doesn't feel totally left out, then remembers something important and zips back in, shoving through the kitchen door. "Rita! All good? Call my insurance if Livewire won't pay up, sorry about the mess, you know where to find me when I get back—"

"I know the drill, kid, don't worry about it. Sorry she won't get off your back." 

Everybody working the mall and the stadium is so used to Super mayhem that they barely even blink at anything lower level than Parasyte, and Livewire in particular tends to haunt the mall. After all, you can take the girl out of the mall by giving her electricity powers but you can't take the mall out of the girl. Or something. 

Rita tosses him a warm foil packet. "Safari Burger for the road."

"My hero!" Kon yells over his shoulder as he rockets out of the building. 

He hovers in the sky for a few moments, looking through the building with x-ray vision to watch Tim laughing with his normal human friends, and Steph hugging her mom as she opens her present. 

Then he turns north.

Kon doesn't realize how natural it started feeling to have Tim sitting next to him until he suddenly stops.

The first time that happens, it's Monday, and all they want to talk about is the Math Bowl Preseason Kickoff Slash Jen's Birthday Party trip to Metropolis. The one Kon wasn't invited to, because 'Kelly' isn't on the math bowl team, and anyway, he'd lied that he was taking his stepmother to the movies over the weekend to cover for the jaunt to Europe.

Kon and Tim walk through the halls together but when they reach the cafeteria he dodges gracefully around the table to insert himself between Hudson and Ives as they sit down. Kon finds himself sitting between Hudson and Jen before he even has a chance to think it's different than usual.

Tim hasn't developed his pictures from the weekend yet, probably wanting to do them by hand once both his arms are functional again. Ives just took his film to Kmart, so he already has the prints back.

"Oh my god!" Jen yells when Ives holds out one of the prints of her and Superboy, flailing so hard Kon has to duck or he might take an elbow in the face and break her arm. "Oh shit, sorry Kelly I forgot you were sitting there—"

"I thought you didn't like Metropolis?" Kon says, trying to look as interested in the picture as everyone else. He looks good despite posing in half a second while holding a handful of onion rings, he notes, then feels guilty that it's the first thing he notices. As if Superboy's image—a beautiful counterfeit, a secret weapon, a cuckoo's chick sculpted by a madman—is anything he's ever deserved, in the grand scheme of things.

Jen looks happy in the picture, her eyes drifting away from the lens towards Kon as if she can't believe he's really there. Tim's in the background, a little blurry, but Kryptonian sight clears the image. His eyes are wide still, staring at Kon with a strange almost wistful expression. Ives snapped the shutter when Tim was just licking a drop of soda off his lips. It makes him look even more vulnerable, somehow.

"Oh, Metropolis is still…eh." Jen wiggles a hand. "But can you picture a Rainforest Cafe around here?"

"Poison Ivy would tear it to pieces," Tim agrees.

"Superboy is pretty okay though. He's like, weirdly normal close up."

Kon blinks. "Is he?"

"Yeah. Not so shiny as the commercials. And he doesn't seem like he's about to tell me to do my homework on time like his brother."

"Cousin," Tim says, then coughs. "Uh, I read in an interview."

"Yeah, that. That's why I like the Bats, you know, they stick it to the man."

Tim blinks. "Do...they?"

"Yeah, none of this like, brush your teeth after every meal go to bed early stay in school PSA junk. If only he didn't like the Spice Girls."

Tim and Kon both stare at her blankly. "Batman?" they say in unison.

"Superboy, geez, you're all useless."

It happens again Tuesday. Their sleeves don't brush when they walk to the cafeteria, which is about when Kon realizes that this is a Thing happening, even before Tim places himself between Hudson and Jen at the table. For someone who looks so spontaneous, Tim's actually very in control of his personal space, and he's suddenly stopped letting Kon into his innermost bubble.

Which…well. It's not that Kon ever really had any right to it, anyway. What with all the lying about where he came from, and the maybe having a boyfriend already, and, oh yeah, the having superpowers that could rip him to pieces.

Maybe Tim remembers now what happened at the museum, and this is his way of showing he isn't upset, but he isn't interested either. In that case, Tim still even talking to him is probably a win.

And maybe it's for the best, since it's not really fair of Kon either to get so close with him while he's trying to get back together with Robin. But since he doesn't seem to be getting anywhere on that plan, either, Tim now distancing himself too stings a little.

Wednesday, they meet to bring the pieces of their project together for the final touches before turning it in during Art the next day.

There's no real way Kon can get out of letting Tim into his house this time: once together, the statue will be too delicate to handle the drive down the mountain from Wayne Manor, even in Dick's smooth-engined sports car. And it would take too long to get to Wayne Manor and back after school, anyway. It only makes sense to put it all together at Kon's.

Dick drops them off; Kon sits in the back, as usual, and Tim has a box in his lap holding the sections of the tower. They talk less than normal, but while Dick raises his eyebrows in the mirror he doesn't say anything about it.

"Call me when you're ready to go," Dick says once he's finished hovering around Tim and seems to conclude he isn't going to collapse just from carrying the box one-handed. "I'm going to stop by the mall for a bit."

Kon leads Tim up the stairs as Dick pulls out of the driveway.

“So, uh, you’ve seen the outside, so don’t get your hopes up,” Kon says, running a hand through the back of his hair and wondering why it doesn’t do anything before remembering there aren’t any curls to untangle right now. 

He unlocks the door with a flourish, because he did lock it this time, so there, but Tim doesn’t even seem to notice. Probably because in Gotham it’s only not locking a door that stands out, but some recognition for a guy’s accomplishments would be nice.

“I’m sure it’s not…oh,” Tim says as he steps through the door.

Kon winces. As reactions from somebody who lives in a two-century-old mansion with a butler go, it could be worse, but it's not what he'd call good, either. “Yeah."

"Yeah," Tim agrees.

"So. Kitchen’s this way, figure we’ll use that table, I mostly fixed the legs so it won’t—Oh shit watch—” Kon starts as Tim nearly walks into a can of paint Kon left sitting on the floor after Robin fled the kitchen (almost five days ago, listen, he’s been preoccupied). 

Before he even finishes the warning Tim half-sidesteps, half-trips around it. Somehow he doesn’t even drop the box, despite only having one free hand.

Tim looks behind him, face a little startled though his heartbeat never changed. “What was that?”

“Nice instincts,” Kon says, grabbing the can and returning it to the stack in the corner. “Sorry, kind of in the middle of some stuff, you know, fixing up the place a little.”

“I’m sure it’ll look…great when you’re done with it?” Tim says a little distantly, turning around in the middle of the dingy linoleum.

“You can put the stuff down, I’ll go grab my parts,” Kon says, waving towards the table. “There’s Jolt in the fridge if you want it.”

Tim raises an eyebrow. “You don’t drink Jolt. You hate Jolt.”

“I…it’s for company,” Kon says, feeling his voice suddenly go strangely raw. Because the bare truth of it is that however much he’s been afraid of letting Tim into his house, he’s still wanted him there desperately for weeks. So desperately that when he let Tim’s name slip in front of Robin he nearly panicked.

He needs to put a stop to this. It’s not fair to Robin, even if he’s being distant, or to Tim, who’s only trying to be a good friend. At least they finally hand in the project tomorrow, and that’ll be the end of it, because there’s no way they’ll win that cruise, right?

It's for the best if Tim pulls back on his own, Kon tells himself again. 'Kelly Clark' was never meant to live forever. It would have to end anyway, and this way nobody's left hurting when Kon goes back to Metropolis.

“I’ll go get my stuff,” he repeats, and bolts for the basement. 

By the time he gets back, Tim is laying the sections of the tower walls and roof neatly on the table next to a spool of insulated wires. He smiles when Kon comes back in the room, but he doesn't move from what is clearly now his side of the table.

Something flickers in his eyes. He's waiting to see how Kon reacts, he decides.

“Here we go!” Kon sets the fabric covered wire frame of the dragon on the table, smiling at him from the other side. “Time to get to work?”

A tiny bit of tightness slips from Tim's shoulders. "Sounds good. I could use some Jolt, now that I think about it."

"Sure," Kon says, feeling some of the tension between them break. "Let me grab a glass."

Tim smiles when he sets the soda on the table, and while his hand doesn't brush Kon's when he grabs it, once they start working he leans across the table far enough that their hair almost gets tangled together in the wires and maybe, actually, everything is pretty okay.

Kon turns on a pop station as Tim fusses one-handed with the batteries because this is not an Enya household, no matter what anyone says about concentration.

"Mariah Carey, huh," Tim says as he helps hold the dragon's torso so Kon can fasten a hidden bracket. "Nice."

"Thought you weren't into pop."

"Sure, but I don't live in a cave either. Neck next…are you sure that's the bottom half of the neck?"

"Yes, I'm sure, I'll hold it, you add the glue. Is your arm okay?" Kon glances at the cast Tim is using to brace his weight on as he leans over the table.

"Yeah, it's fine, I get it off end of next week," Tim says absently. He keeps brushing glue over the joint in the dragon's neck. "Probably could have it off now but if I keep wearing it Dick buys me coffee without ratting me out to the butler. And it means he has to set the table every night."

"Damn," Kon laughs, watching the way Tim's tongue pokes out a little as he brushes a hard-to-reach spot. "Brutal."

"He doesn't deserve it, really," Tim says. "I'm probably a terrible brother."

He doesn't sound quite like he's joking, but he doesn't sound like he wants to discuss it, either. Kon decides on a strategic vaguely interested noise and Tim looks up at him with a tiny relieved smile. 

He doesn't seem to realize how close this puts their faces. Kon suddenly discovers that Kryptonians can blush really hard, actually, and Tim doesn't say anything about this either.

After about an hour the body of the dragon is complete and wired up, its head resting on the tower's tilted roof and its tail wrapped around the base to disguise the switch controlling the lights.

Kon lays out the wings, setting them flat on the table next to a bowl of clear glue mixed with varnish. "Alright, photo time. You bring the goods?"

Tim kneels next to the box and comes up with a thick stack of black-and-white photo prints in his good hand. "Ready to go. This should be enough to cover—whoa!" He tries to brace them in his left hand and undo the rubber band with his right, but slips, scattering photos across the table. "Sorry!"

"No worries, I got this." Kon crouches and starts picking photos up off the floor. 

He recognizes some of the locations—the museum, the twisted fence of the rec center, the fountains in front of the mall. He pauses, staring absently at a night view of the harbor bridge: the same place he made out with Robin after Luthor was arrested. It must have been taken from a pretty high angle to get a view like that, but it's not like Tim couldn't afford a helicopter tour. He sighs and stands up, then tosses the photos on the table.

“Alright.” Kon grabs a paintbrush and spins it. “Let’s finish this.”

Chapter Text

"That went pretty well, I thought." Tim has his free hand on his hip as they stand in the back of the room, watching everyone else turn in their projects now that the class is over.

The dragon sits on the table among everyone else's projects, and Kon thinks it looks good even with the lights in the mouth, eyes, and windows switched off. Most of the pieces are in dark colors, but theirs is the only one that's entirely monochrome. 

The seemingly perilously balanced sections of the tower are holding up under the dragon's weight (except for one spot that Tim crumbled on purpose and painted three parallel gashes after they settled where the claws would rest), and despite the broad spread of the wings the whole thing is staying balanced. From this distance, the protectively curved wings looked like they're covered in shiny silver scales, but up close they're covered in an array of Gotham scenic photos, gleaming under the clear varnish.

"Yeah, pretty well," Kon agrees. Ms. Fradon hadn't made too dramatic of an external reaction, just 'Oh, very nice work from both of you, especially while you were injured, Tim.' But her heartbeat kicked up a few notches, so either she hated it and was trying to be nice, or she liked it a lot and was trying to be diplomatic.

"Well, I guess that's it for our team unless we win that cruise." Tim tries to climb up on the table he's leaning on but it's just too high to manage without both hands. Kon slides a crate across the floor for him to step up on. It feels like it's full of weights or scrap metal or something, but of course Tim doesn't know that. "Thanks," Tim says.

"Don't mention it. Like, who wants a cruise anyway? In April? Please."

"Right? I still get seasick whenever we go out with Bruce, and there aren't even any of my teachers on the yacht."

Kon points at the front of the room. "I bet if anyone from our class goes it's Jen and Clarissa." Jen and Clarissa are handing their statue in now: it looks like a Barbie factory exploded on a gargoyle. They both look like they're trying extremely hard to look like they're totally disinterested and don't care about what kind of grade they get, but they're also both practically vibrating in anticipation. 

Tim laughs. "I don't know how they made it through that without killing each other. Anyway."

"Yeah?" Kon leans back on the table and looks up at Tim.

"Looks like this is the end of the line. So. I know I wasn't the most helpful what with my schedule and then getting hit with fear gas and then breaking my arm, which I swear I didn't just do to get out of the work, but it was…a pleasure working with you, partner." Tim smiles and holds out his good hand, reaching awkwardly across his body. "Thanks."

"You too." Kon clasps his hand cautiously since Tim has one broken wrist already and really doesn't need a full set, and is a little surprised at how firm his grip is. Lois always complains about Bruce having the handshake strength of a drunk guppy. Maybe Tim learned better from Alfred. "Seriously, we're better off without the cruise."

"Definitely." Tim pushes off the table and nearly slips on a stray crayon as he lands, and Kon barely resists the urge to catch him. "Well, I've got to go talk to the Math Bowl supervisor, so I'll see you around, okay?"

Kon kicks at a stray crayon on the floor. "Yeah. Around."

Tim sighs and runs his free hand through his hair. "Ah, cripes, that sounded bad. By 'around', I meant 'tomorrow at lunch', you get that, right. Okay gotta run bye—"

The next day, they still aren't sitting next to each other, but Tim brings a box of cookies from Alfred so they can all celebrate finishing the project, and he holds it out to Kon first, which probably is just because they're sitting across from each other so it was easiest. But still, it's something, maybe, and Kon really needs to stop being so desperate.

His time in Gotham is almost over, after all.

Now that the art project is done, Kon has time to pay attention to the other homework he's been neglecting since he arrived. He turned in the essay on The Great Gatsby two weeks ago and got an okay grade on it, but now he has to pick two short stories to discuss in a report, and he hasn't touched the anthology he picked out from the library at all. Everything else has been so exhausting that he hasn't been able to bring himself to even try to read.

But even if a failing grade isn't going to follow 'Kelly' forever, on account of him not existing, not even trying feels wrong. And Tana might be disappointed, after helping read over his Gatsby essay during one of their meetups. She said it was a good first effort and she wasn't even lying…even though Kon could tell from her heartbeat she was prepared to, which was very nice of her if pointless when dealing with a Super.

After cleaning up the last scraps of the project and finishing the kitchen trim, Kon ducks out to a convenience store to get an armful of hotdogs before tackling the book.

He doesn't lock the door. It's dark enough that he can turn the speed on a little as soon as he reaches the alley, so it barely takes him five minutes there and back, and what’s five minutes? Everyone in Gotham acts like the world's going to end if they let their guard down for a second. 

There's something breathing in the house as he approaches the door.

Kon pauses on the steps and sighs. A normal person would be scared, probably, but Kon just thinks, dammit, now everyone's going to tell me they told me so, and then, crap, what if I have to fight? I just got it almost looking like a real house kind of.

Whoever it is, or whatever it is, it's holding his book and lounging on the really good dent in the couch cushions in front of the tv, right where Kon planned to be two minutes from now.

Rude.

The breathing is too light for something very large, and a quick shot of x-ray confirms he's looking at a smallish teenage human.

A smallish teenage human that he knows, at least, but she has a mask on so he should be cool about it.

Kon enters casually, drops the hotdogs on the table as he crosses to the fridge, then counts three seconds before deciding he's reached normal human standards for Noticing Things. Normal humans who aren't reporters or Clark Kent's parents, anyway. His sample set has been kind of biased so it’s really hard to tell what’s normal outside of journalist hunches or super-parental instincts.

"Hello?" he calls, closing the fridge and turning towards the living room. "Is there somebody else in—whoa."

It's a pretty good imitation of a normal human startle reflex, if he does say so himself. Luckily Jimmy is pretty easily startled, despite all the Super-weirdness you’d think he would be used to by now, so Kon’s seen a whole lot of examples. 

"Hey, kid," Steph says from under a purple cowl, "the fuck is with you and the unlocked doors?"

"Uh." Kon blinks. "Hi? What are you?"

"I'm the Spoiler."

The what now? "I—I know she throws the necklace in the ocean at the end of Titanic, you didn't have to come all this way and tell me."

“Ooooooh.” She tilts her head in a way that says she's definitely rolling her eyes behind the full-face mask. "Wow, that's truly original and totally nothing I've ever heard before even once."

Her body language is kind of different, like this—not calculated, Kon thinks, since it's still obviously her, but just something that comes out of putting the mask on. Her voice isn't altered apart from speaking more sharply to be heard through the fabric, but she moves a little more languidly, limbs spread out more. She's draped across his couch like a small purple Goblin King, knee-high boots and all.

And now that he thinks about it, the knotted cord belt and grappling hooks hanging at her hip look pretty familiar. Extreme macrame, huh. I get it now.

She must have made the whole costume. It's sewn out of normal fabric, dyed denim and leotard knits and heavy satins, with airbrushing and puffed fabric paint in even more shades or purple to give it texture. The cape looks like it was recycled from the back of a thrift store prom dress, and so does the mesh stiffening the cowl. There's some leather reinforcement under her loose shirt, but not a lot of armor. Nothing that would stop bullets.

So all in all, his initial theory that everyone in Gotham is goddamn crazy remains pretty sound.

Kon leans on the arched entry to the living room and stares at her through his glasses. "Have we met?"

And of course she can't answer this with a yes. Kon knows that, he just wants to know what her supposed cover is so he doesn't accidentally bust her before he can get her to leave. Someone without x-ray vision would probably figure it out eventually, but not within thirty seconds, and besides as a fellow cape it would just be rude. 

"Well—you know Robin and I'm a friend of his," she blurts out, and the weird thing isn't that she's lying, but that she isn't. Not about the knowing Robin part, anyway.

This is…news.

Is she another Bat? She can't be, not if he never heard the others talking about her. Maybe she's a freelancer, like Huntress seems to be.

"So like, figured if he wasn't around to keep you from getting murdered in your bed than I would, you know? Here, catch."

He snatches the object she picks up from the end table and tosses at him. It's one of the VHS tapes laying around while he organizes the TV stand. "...Home Alone?" He raises his eyebrows. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, man, study that shit, it could save your life."

She swears more as Spoiler. Kon wonders if that's a deliberate act, or more of her freeing herself from the constraints of her normal life.

"Whatever. Are you staying there all night or what?"

"I can if I have to," Spoiler says. "Somebody has to keep you safe if you won't."

"Fine, fine, I'll go lock the door, look, I'm locking it right now." He stomps through the hall and slams the deadbolt with as much force as he can without shattering the entire wall. "See? Locked."

"There is still hope," Steph says, and if she hadn't already said she knew Robin Kon might have guessed it from the familiar sarcastic tone. "We'll get you security lights next." She follows him into the hall and stops short by the table. Her head tilts a little. "Are you eating all of those hotdogs, dude?"

"Uh…" Kon has no idea what a normal human boy number of hotdogs is. He's convinced the convenience store guy he has four siblings, just in case. But whatever that number is, he’s pretty sure a not obviously bulky kid in a plaid sweater vest probably can't eat seventeen hotdogs in a row without inviting some questions. "Some were…for later? Did you want one?"

"Please, dude, I am starving, mom didn't—I didn't have any dinner tonight."

"My name's Kelly, by the way, you don't have to keep calling me Dude."

"Yeah. Oh. Yeah, sure, I knew that. From Robin." This time the whole thing is a lie. So: Steph knows Robin, Steph knows Kelly is connected to Robin, but Robin hasn't been the one to tell her about Kelly.

Is Superboy not being the only person Robin isn’t talking to a good sign? Probably not…

Soon, they're sitting on the living room floor eating hot dogs and Pepsi and playing Connect 4 on an old set Kon spots under the couch. 

Spoiler is pretty cool, Kon concludes, not that she wouldn't have been, because she's Steph. Even if the idea of her suiting up in her homemade gear and running around after criminals without even Bat-backup most of the time is absolutely freaking terrifying.

And maybe she does have a point about the whole locks thing. Kon is willing to consider it as a possibility. After all, if someone had broken in while Tim was there things might have gotten complicated.

Spoiler-Steph is pretty cagey about Robin, but happy to talk about herself, and not very good at covering for her secret identity. Kon quickly learns that she mainly patrols around the mall and the north suburbs, that she has very strong opinions on what is the correct length of ears for the Bat-cowl to have and doesn’t care who knows it (‘should have seen him a couple years ago, oh my god, it was like he was trying to pick up public access TV,’), and that her dad is some kind of minor Gotham rogue who, quote, ‘freakin’ sucks’.

“Oh, I’ll drink to that,” Kon says, lifting his can.

“You too huh? Is he henching or something or does he have his own shitty costume in lame 70s wallpaper colors and a stupid supervillain name. Wait, you’re from out of town, so he’s probably like, normal person bad…I don’t know what that’s like, what is that like.”

“That is…a long story,” Kon says quickly, since he also doesn't know what that's like. “But he’s in jail for now, at least.”

“Glad to hear it. To terrible dads!” Steph taps her Pepsi on his. “Fuck ‘em.”

They both laugh as Kon grabs another hot dog.

"Ugh, you win again.” Steph shoves the Connect Four box aside after another ten minutes and sighs. “What's the book for?" she asks, waving a still-wrapped hotdog (her fourth, not that Kon’s counting wistfully or anything) at the Great American Short Stories anthology.

"School project," Kon explains. "Gotta write a report but I don't know what on."

"Oh. Cool, you wanna start on that?" She gets up and flops down on the couch, swinging her feet.

"I didn't know vigilantes did after school tutoring on the side," Kon grumbles as Steph starts flipping through the book. 

“Yeah, like, usually it’s the local second graders but I’m in…I’m aware of what tenth grade is, you know? We can figure this out. What kind of crime fighter would I be if I wasn’t helping the local kids stay in school?”

“Uh, like a normal one?” Kon points out. “Because vigilantes don’t do this? It’s weird?”

“It's not weird when Superman does it! I've seen the after-school specials! Go get some paper, civilian.” Steph waves a hand dismissively. Kon rolls his eyes and jogs upstairs to look for his spare notebook. Steph keeps going, her voice easily carrying through the thin walls even without super-hearing. “Boring…boring…Mark Twain, ugh…boring…Oh, my mom has this one about working at Macy’s like, memorized, it’s pretty funny for something written before phones existed.”

“Oh yeah?” Kon considers sliding down the banister, realizes he would definitely turn the banister into kindling if he tried it, and walks down the stairs at normal human speed, which takes forever. “Hit me with it.”

“...and then someone came in and said I couldn’t punch the clock with my hat on. So I had to leave, bowing timidly at the time dock and its prophet, and I went and found out my locker number, which was 1773, and my time-clock number, which was 712, and my cash-box number, which was 1336, and my cash-register number, which was 253, and my cash-register-drawer number, which was K…”

Kon reels a little at the serial numbers, though he thinks he manages to hide it as he joins Steph at the table. As Steph continues reading it sinks in a little that the story's making fun of the whole idea, showing how ridiculous it is to reduce the world to strings of numbers and pointless tasks.

No wonder Luthor didn't care about Great American Literature, he thinks, and suddenly it's the greatest joke in the world.

"I didn't think it was that funny but okay…"

Steph pats his shoulder as he laughs giddily, the glasses dropping into his lap as he puts his hands over his face.

"Okay for real this is starting to get a little concerning to me have you had any weird gas leaks or anything?"

"No, I—I'm fine, honest—" He can practically feel Steph staring as he swallows down a last burst of laughter. He blocks his profile with his hand until he has his glasses back on, just in case; he figured before that she knew about Superboy, but he didn't realize until seeing her in the mall that she was such an enthusiastic fan.

He goes to grab another drink, but Steph is chugging his last Pepsi. He grabs a can of Jolt instead.

"Oh, ugh, not Jolt, Robin never stops drinking that stuff," Steph says as she lowers her mask to cover her mouth again. "I don't know how he's not, like, visibly vibrating at all times. Uh, moving on," she says quickly. "Let's look at some of the other stuff in here…there's O. Henry, we covered him at school, Stephen King, meh, he's okay, there's…oh, Alan Scott, he's some old timey scifi writer or something…"

It's way easier to pay attention when Steph is reading, and he doesn't have to struggle to keep the words in order every moment. He listens to her reading out random paragraphs every time she runs into something interesting and sometimes writes down the page numbers.

Jolt is…not good, he discovers immediately. Unlike Pepsi, where it blends in more, he can taste the caffeine as kind of a dull burnt flavor on the back of his tongue, and it doesn't do anything for him to make it worth it at all. And the rest of the taste is really nothing to write home about, the intense fake-fruit artificial flavoring jarring strangely against his too-sensitive taste buds among the aggressive sweetness and the caffeine taste.

Seriously, how does Tim stand it? And now Robin too? They don't even sell Jolt in Metropolis, something is seriously wrong with Gotham.

As Steph takes a break to flip pages, he hears Robin's music, Nirvana playing from a few blocks over. The sound veers sharply towards the house before snapping off.

"Oh boy," Kon mutters into his soda.

"What?" Steph says. "Okay, so we're agreed on the Macy’s story, and you said you needed two, so maybe we can find something else with a similar…" 

She pushes her chair back and walks towards the sink to rinse her empty can, still looking over her shoulder at Kon. She turns the faucet on then turns to face the sink and jumps back with a yelp, the can flying out of her hand as she points accusingly at the window. 

"Holy shit how long—"

"I think that's my line," Robin says as he flows through the window. He perches on the edge of the sink like a spiky-haired, sexy, perfectly muscled gargoyle. 

Kon possibly has it bad.

"What's going on here?"

God, the intimidating Robin voice is so sexy. It's really tragic that Batman won't let him go on the radio.

"Ha! Aha!" Spoiler points at Kon, then back to Robin. "Wait! I know what's going on here!"

Robin tilts his head, his heart jolting for a moment. "You…do?"

"You do?" Kon echoes.

"Yes! I've found your secret boyfriend!"

Jolt sprays over Kon's glasses and hair as he loses control of his grip on the can. Robin's hands slip and he almost falls off the counter, turning the tumble into a flip at the last second.

"I knew it!"

"Hang—hang on a second," Kon says, reaching blindly for a towel before he remembers he has x-ray vision and using that to find it and pat down his face.

This would be the perfect time to explain, except he has no idea how Steph would react if he suddenly revealed himself and Robin might not take it well if they had an audience. Still, he has to do it sometime or the situation will get worse and worse—

"Actually—" he starts weakly but they're both ignoring him.

"That is not what is happening!" Robin's heart slams into high gear, and Kon jumps at the sudden bite in his voice.

"Look, I'm happy for you, I'm not jealous or anything, I've just been worried—"

"There is nothing to be worried about and he is not my boyfriend!"

"Y-yeah, we're not—not anything like that," Kon agrees helplessly, since there's clearly some Bat Stuff involved here and he just doesn't know what to do any more. At least neither Robin or Spoiler are taking issue with the 'boy' part of the equation, but that seems to be the least of his problems at the moment.

"He's just a normal—he doesn't have anything to do with any of us! At all!"

Robin sounds pissed, is the thing…but underneath it his heart is racing almost as bad as Tim's during his fear hallucinations and his lungs are going wild. It's impressive—and also absolutely horrifying, if Kon thinks about it—how well he can control his outward reactions, because Kon is pretty sure Steph can't tell a thing except that he's angry. He's amazed at how little it makes her back down, but then, she has a supervillain for a father and fights crime in her spare time and she isn't even invulnerable.

"Is this still about New Year's?" Steph snaps back, taking a step forward as Robin leans back against the edge of the sink. 

The faucet is still running, Kon notices distantly. He should turn it off, the planet doesn't have infinite water. Clark did a PSA about it and he is definitely not being everything Superman knows he can be right now.

Somehow going near Robin is the last thing he wants to do at the moment.

Are you going all Radiohead because of New Year's?" Steph repeats.

"This isn't about—Radiohead…?" Robin's heart trips into a slower rhythm as Kon hears him blink behind the mask. Some of the tension drops out of his mouth. "What?"

"Um," Kon says and both of them stare at him. He feels that primal shiver go down his back again as the white lenses focus in on him. "Robin, can you…the sink…" He points.

"Oh, cripes, sorry." Robin turns the faucet off and takes a step away from the counter.

Steph turns as he moves, keeping herself between him and Kon, which he would appreciate if she wasn't objectively the most delicate thing in the room right now. (Of course, if he tried to say that she'd probably punch him and break her hand, so he keeps his mouth shut.) 

"You know, this like, I'm a creeeeeeep, I'm a weeeeeeirdo bullshit."

Robin blinks a few more times. "I don't—I don't sound like that." He suddenly sounds uncertain about the point.

Steph grabs the Easy Cheese off the counter and holds it up to her purple mask like a microphone. "You're so speeeeeecial…" she belts, loud enough that both Kon and Robin glance towards the windows. "So fucking speee-eeee-cial…"

"Cut it out, Spoiler, come on…oh my god you’re still going…" 

Robin’s hard expression wavers, then he puts a glove over his face, laughing weakly as he tries to grab for the canister in Steph’s hand with the other. She swats his hand away and they end up in a slow-motion slap fight until she spins to sit on the table.

“What the hell am I doin’ heeeeeeeere…”

“You’re not even doing it right! Pleeeeeease!”

Steph finally finishes the song and dodges around Robin to take a bow, then tosses the canister at Kon. Kon picks up another hotdog and covers it with shelf stable american cheese because staring at the most beautiful boy on the planet is hard work. The glimpse of his startled, half-hidden smile is like the golden sunlight through the Gotham clouds.

“Are you done?” Robin puts his hands on his hips as he stares her down, but the unnerving anger-over-panic has mostly faded. His heart is still racing, but he’s breathing normally now. And still barely holding back a smile.

“You just smiled for the first time in like, seven years, so yeah.”

“Wonder why,” Robin mutters.

“Look, I know things were rough,” Steph says, “But you don’t have to pull all this Phantom of the Opera shit—”

“No, Spoiler, okay, you don’t—you don’t get it.”

“What don’t I get?”

“That! That’s what you don’t get!”

“Okay, that’s cryptic even for you, my melodramatic friend.”

“Look, I’m sorry I freaked out, okay?” Robin says. “I…I shouldn’t have yelled at you. But—there’s nothing between me and Kelly, okay? I should never have come in here at all.”

“I mean, I didn’t mind,” Kon tries, but once again the person who isn’t in a cape has suddenly turned invisible as far as the vigilantes are concerned.

“No, that’s the opposite—”

“I’m sorry, Kelly, I shouldn’t have brought you into this.”

“Again I didn’t mind.”

Kon takes a step forward and Robin dodges back, his heartbeat jolting up again. “Well, you…you should, okay? That’s the problem. I’m not coming back. You shouldn’t either, Spoiler.” He flicks a last look towards Kon, the lenses of the mask rounded uncertainly. “Lock your doors next time.”

Before either Steph or Kon can say another word, he vaults up onto the counter, the trailing edge of his cape rippling past Kon’s hand as he disappears through the window into the night.

“Geez.” Steph drags her hands down her mask. “Somebody watched Edward Scissorhands too many times. God, Kelly, I am so sorry, I got excited and I ruined everything. I thought he looked happier the last few weeks so I went snooping…ugh, I’m so dumb…”

“What? No! You’re not!”

“God, he doesn’t deserve you. Hand over the cheese.”

Steph pulls up her mask and leans back against the table, holding the nozzle down and spiraling Easy Cheese into her mouth until the can sputters. She sighs despondently.

Kon checks the contents of his cabinets with his x-ray. “I’ve got more?”

“But, seriously, there never was anything between us,” Kon says as he shakes the fifth can. “He walked me home, like, twice, that’s it.”

“Ugh, shoulda known, you’re way too good for him. Cracker me.”

Kon heaps cheese onto the Ritz Steph holds out. “So…” Maybe he shouldn’t be asking, but right now there’s a total of one person willing to talk to him who might know anything. “What was that about New Year’s? You said he was going through a rough patch?”

“Okay, so.” Steph swallows the cracker in one bite and follows it with a large spoonful of Trix yogurt as Kon watches in horror. “Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this. But on the other hand I am  losing my mind dealing with this, and like, you’re not going to tell anybody, right?”

“Not a soul.”

“Swear on your last can of Easy Cheese.”

“No one besides us will ever hear a word.” Except Superboy, but he’s been here the whole time.

“God, it’s good having some normal friends for once.” Steph drips another string of cheese into her mouth.

“Yeah…You said something about New Year’s?”

“Yeah, okay. I wasn’t there, I had clarinet camp, but, like. We’d already had whatever the goddamn happened with Batgirl…”

“The kids at school said she quit.”

Steph winces and something goes rough in her voice. “Yeah, I don’t know, one week she was there and the next week she wasn’t and then Robin acted like one of his best friends up and died.”

“Oh. God.” Kon remembers Robin seeming normal up until he went no-contact at the start of the year, but on the other hand, he’d been busy starting his radio empire. And…well. Robin was pretty good at acting normal, since normal-for-Robin was already so deeply weird. And Kon never would have asked about his personal life, since he'd promised to respect the Bat secrets, but how could he not have been looking hard enough to realize something was wrong? “That’s…I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t…know her know her, you know? But…” she shakes her head. “Still sucks. And it really broke him up, for as much as he was willing to show to me, so it must have been really bad, you know, inside. Is that a can of peaches?”

“I’m pretty sure that is a crime,” Kon says as he watches her sit on the counter to drain the can of fruit into the sink, then replace the liquid with cheese.

“Who’s stopping me? Batman?”

Kon holds his hands up in defeat as she grabs a fork. “Fair.”

“And then, okay, and fucking then, I go away to clarinet camp, okay.”

“We’re very clear about the clarinet camp, yes.”

“Robin seems to be doing better before I left, I write him a postcard not that I know where the hell to send it, I figure it’s all looking up. Next thing I know Two-Face is ripping the whole city apart so bad our camp goes on lockdown a whole extra week, I miss New Year’s, my mom’s calling me freaking out every two hours, and when I finally get back he’s…I mean you saw him.”

“Yeah.”

“One-man high school version of Wuthering Heights.”

“I…haven’t read Wuthering Heights.”

“Whatever. You get the idea. And he’s kind of only gotten worse from there because we’ve got so much other shit going on with Intergang, and Nightwing was off the streets from New Year’s until like, March, they barely let me in the loop enough to help and Huntress only helps out when she feels like it, and…” she waves a cheese-laden slice of peach in the air. “Jesus, would it kill him to talk to somebody?”

“It’s Robin,” Kon points out.

“Okay, yeah, good point.” She jumps off the counter and sets the can of cheese peach gloop on the tile. “God, it’s nice to have somebody just listen for once. The only person I can talk to about cape stuff is him, so you can see how well that was going for me. Sorry for talking your ear off all night.”

“It’s okay,” Kon replies. He probably would have just lay in bed thinking about Robin, anyway. “Cheese for the road?” He tosses her the half-empty canister.

“You are genuinely a hero. Good luck with that report!”

Tim is distant the next day at school, mostly because he’s once again half-asleep the whole time. He rouses enough during lunch to announce he’s finally getting the cast off that weekend, but otherwise he spends the day staring drowsily at the incoherent doodles passing for his class notes. He barely seems to notice Kon is there.

The day after that, Kon is prepared for more of the same, but as he walks up to his locker he suddenly feels a hand on his arm. He half-jerks away, remembers the super strength, and turns very carefully. “What…?”

Tim is staring up at him, his eyes wide and sort of panicked looking as his fingers dig into Kon’s sweater with surprising strength. “Kelly. We have. A situation.”

“Huh?” Kon replies eloquently. “Did your dad crack down on the Jolt again? Is Poison Ivy attacking? Was there another Blackgate breakout?”

Tim is already pulling him down the hall and around the corner towards the teachers’ offices. “So, I’m figuring that if I break my arm again it’s going to look suspicious since I’m literally just about to get the cast off but we might need extreme measures here so just say the word and I’ll push you down the stairs, I’ve done the math, I know exactly how to do it…”

“Okay, that’s not concerning at all…”

“...and I already ran into her this morning since I came early for Math Bowl stuff and she’s really excited so if we don’t agree to go and we don’t have a really good excuse she’s going to start calling our parents…”

They stop in front of Ms. Fradon’s brightly painted door. Tim points wordlessly at the announcement pinned to her corkboard between Magic School Bus cutouts.

“Oh,” Kon says. “That…that’s a situation.”

“She already had everybody sign permission slips,” Tim says. “When we first went on the field trip.”

“Yeah,” Kon says as he remembers handing the paper to Tana without even thinking about it.

“So I’m thinking if we go to the third floor landing—”

“I’m not breaking my arm!” At least Tim is asking permission instead of just shoving him, because then Kon would be breaking the stairs and the whole thing would be blown wide open.

“I can tell you how to fake appendicitis—”

“No!” Kon isn’t even sure he has an appendix, not that that’s the biggest issue with that scenario. “How is that your solution for things?”

“Uh…”

Tim stares up at him blankly. He blinks a few times, as Kon stares at the sweep of his long dark lashes. There’s definitely something to be said for tall, dark, and intimidating, but having Tim clinging and staring up at him beseechingly also makes something spark wildly inside his head, something that just makes him want to grab him and carry him away and protect him forever. 

“I have problems,” Tim blurts out finally.

You and me both. “I’m definitely not going to argue with that.”

“And, and most of all no offense it’s not you but I cannot be outside the city right now, so we need to think of something quick before—”

Kon hears someone in the broadcasting room flip the intercom switch the second before the speakers in the hall come to life.

“An exciting update to this week’s news, we have a big congratulations for our very own Ms. Fradon and Gotham City High School’s finalist team in the Coastal Art Grand Prix Youth Division…”

Tim sighs and points up at the nearest speaker. “...That.”

Chapter Text

Kon jumps from the back of the bench he’s perching on to the ground as Tim walks up. "You couldn't get out of it either, huh?" He nods at the duffle bag still on the bench.

Tim laughs, and the sound is only a little manic. He gestures over his shoulder at his escort. "What gave it away?" 

Bruce Wayne (Kon still double takes every time he sees him but nope, still him) pats Tim's shoulder gently. "You've earned this, son, what's the point of not enjoying yourself?"

Wow, Kon never thought Bruce Wayne understood the concept of 'earning' anything, not from the way Lois always talks.

Parenthood really changes a guy. He’s not even wearing Armani today, just a tailored peacoat over slacks; that’s practically vacation wear, for a guy like him, though it still clashes wildly with his sons’ outfits. Dick is wearing double denim and a Knights jersey, and Tim is wearing a bright teal cardigan buttoned over a tshirt with a rock band logo that Kon can’t quite make out.

"Tim, is this everything?" Dick calls as he kicks the car door closed—not Dick’s little blue sports car, but a huge red muscle car that must be the one Bruce doesn’t like him driving. He has a large backpack slung over one shoulder and a pink rolling suitcase in his other hand.

Tim dodges out from under Bruce's hand to run over. "You don't have to carry everything!" He protests, trying to pull the suitcase away.

"Right, and who here literally just got their cast off, like, two seconds ago?"

“That’s not—you know that’s not the same,” Tim hisses in a low voice. “Not after you—”

“Tim,” Dick starts in the same urgent quiet tone, but Bruce cuts in before Kon can make anything else out. A normal human wouldn’t be able to hear anything at that distance at all, and their expressions barely changed from their usual playful exchanges.

“Of course you shouldn’t carry everything, Dick. I'll take this off your hands.” Bruce grabs Tim around the waist with both arms—Tim makes a surprised little gasp and freezes with his hands on Bruce’s shoulders—and sets him on the roof of the car. “Stay, we’ll handle this,” he says, then turns back to grab the suitcase. “Where did you say the registration was?”

“Ugh, this is abduction,” Tim groans, falling back on the roof of the car.

“No, it’s…the opposite…I’m pretty sure.” Bruce straightens up and stares up at the clouds with an expression of intense concentration. For him, anyway. “And I should know, you know, because of all the abductions.” He nods thoughtfully. “Gosh, I get taken hostage a lot.”

“Whyyyyyyyyyy are you like this,” Tim groans, putting his hands over his face. “Fine, fine, I give in, enough.”

“Great!” Bruce beams.

Tim droops slowly off the side of the car and slouches over to stand next to Dick, ducking behind him a little like he’s a human shield.

“I know you’ll have fun once you actually get going,” Bruce continues cheerfully. Tim rolls his eyes. “You should make the most of it! Just, you know…” Bruce waves a hand vaguely, and Kon can practically feel his brain cells evaporating looking at the vapid smile. “Chillax?”

Tim clamps a hand over his mouth, making strangled noises behind it.

“Oh my god.” Dick leans an arm on his shoulder and whispers at him loudly in an exaggerated valley girl accent. “Bruce Wayne just said ‘chillax’.”

Tim begins choking harder.

“I…I heard it from Lucius…”

“Can we get on the damn boat,” Tim finally manages to force out.

Tim rushes ahead with Dick to escape Bruce, who's still burdened down with the suitcase. Kon follows them.

“Hey. Tim’s friend.”

For someone so…Bruce Wayne, he can move weirdly quietly. Kon barely realizes he’s there until there’s a hand on his arm, and he turns—even though the pressure is light, it doesn’t even occur to him not to follow the movement.

“Uh…yeah?” Kon blinks up at him behind the glasses, trying to look as awestruck-human-boy normal as possible. “It’s, uh, it’s Kelly…sir…” The title would only be appropriate for someone of Bruce’s status, but Kon still has to hold back a wince as he says it.

Bruce is taller than he thought at first, when they passed each other on the stairs of Wayne Manor. He must be near Clark’s height, if they were both standing flat on the ground.

“Right, Kelly, of course.” He gives Kon another one of those long, strangely perceptive looks. Maybe it’s just the unusual color of his eyes that gives that impression. “Keep an eye on Tim, will you?”

Okay, that was not what he expected. “Uh…sure…will do that…”

“And—behave yourself,” Bruce says with a laugh, poking a finger towards his chest. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Oh, that leaves the field of options pretty open then, Kon thinks as Bruce speeds up to catch up with Tim and Dick. But he doesn’t say it, because it seems like Bruce is really trying and probably he’s picked up that this is a thing dads say, not realizing that most dads haven’t also had pictures taken with seven supermodels at Paris Fashion Week. 

Still, Kon thinks with brief bitterness, it's more than Luthor ever cared to try, even when he was still pretending he meant well. He barely even bothered to pretend, really, he just assumed Kon wouldn't know any better than to trust the hand that fed him until it became the hand that also threatened and experimented.

It's not fair to engineer someone clueless enough to fall for that and then mock them when—

Kon blinks away red before he singes the pavement in front of him and drags himself back to reality, where Bruce is laughing at something Dick said and squeezing his shoulder affectionately.

Tim tugs the backpack away from Dick as they approach the gangplank. “Look, I can check in by myself, okay? You got me here, you win.” He grabs for the suitcase again but Bruce swings it out of his reach. “Please, will you just let me do it so there’s at least a chance they don’t realize your son’s in their contest before they give the results out?”

“Oh.” 

Bruce seems to wilt a little, and Tim sighs. “I…I’ll have fun. I guess. Thanks for dropping me off.”

“Any time.” Bruce sets down the suitcase, then pats Tim’s hair lightly. “See you in a few days.”

Dick turns to wave as he follows Bruce back to the car. Tim waves back, with a small but genuine smile despite his earlier irritation and bickering.

After settling the backpack on his shoulders, Tim reaches for the suitcase, but Kon grabs it before he can pick it up. He’s still recovering, after all, even if he just got the cast off. That must have been what Bruce meant in that weird little heart-to-heart speech.

“I’ll take that.” The suitcase is way heavier than it looked with Bruce carrying it so easily, so Kon sets it down and releases the rolling handle instead, since he’s supposed to be a normal human boy here. “Let’s go find that registration table.”

Registration for the contest participants (about half boarding in Gotham and the rest in Metropolis the next morning) is in the grand ballroom, lined with around two dozen covered stands holding the statues. All the statues are already there, since the schools sent them ahead of time. Kon flicks the x-ray on for a moment as they get in line and finds their dragon in one of the far corners, next to a clay tiger sculpture. 

"Gotham, Gotham…which school?" the staffer handling the table asks, squinting at a clipboard.

"City High School," Tim replies.

“Let me look…there you are. You’re in Deck C, Suite K.”

“And he is…?” Tim points at Kon.

The staffer raises her eyebrows like Tim just started speaking Martian. “...aaaaaalso Suite K?”

“Oh,” Tim says.

“Oh,” Kon says.

“You’re holding up the line,” the staffer says. “Here’s your keys.”

"Looks like they don't really roll out the red carpet for random highschool kids who aren't named Wayne, huh," Kon says as he follows Tim through the halls, mainly because he's trying desperately to find something else to think about besides the fact he's about to spend the night with him.

Nothing had better happen to this cruise because he doesn't want to have to explain what's happening if Robin has to make a sudden visit. Not that anything will be happening, obviously, since Kon’s love life seems to be a very long joke at the moment.

"The ship's not big, with the number of entrants and their teachers I should have expected this," Tim replies, speaking a little higher and faster than usual. "It's not like there's a huge amount of funding for this, it's mainly a few rich alumni, couple art colleges, and I think the Daily Planet, someone on their comic page won the first year."

"The Daily Planet?" Kon hopes he doesn't suddenly sound terrified.

"Yeah, they usually send a couple reporters and a camera guy to the ceremony at the end. Oh, here's our room. But still, it's not like they're going to put us in the same bed or anything," he adds as he fumbles with the key.

Kon x-rays through the door and winces. "Oh yeah, I'm sure they wouldn't."

Tim pushes the door open. "Oh boy. Well. This is fine."

"Yeah." Kon sets Tim's suitcase by the door and drops his own duffel bag on the chair by the desk.

They both stare at each other for a second, then come to the unspoken agreement that they're just not going to talk about it.

"Lunch?" Kon suggests.

"Please."

Since Ms. Fradon had an important school board meeting, she's joining the cruise in Metropolis the next morning, with the rest of the contestants. This means Kon and Tim are completely unsupervised for the rest of the day, apart from occasional bored glances from other chaperones.

There are a few activities after lunch, mostly pretty tame stuff like ceramic painting and board games and art history lectures. Kon would have thought it all hellaciously boring if he'd infiltrated the contest while still working for Luthor. Nobody's underage drinking, even, and he can see a string quartet setting up for an after-dinner dance. (Kon hates classical music, since it brings up too many memories of being stuck at Luthor events and, unlike art, Luthor genuinely likes it.)

Now, he still finds it a little boring, but he sits through one of the lectures since Tim is interested in the different eras of Egyptian sculpture and doesn't even dislike it, although it's hard to say how much of that is the talk being engaging and how much is that watching Tim watch it gives Kon the perfect view of his profile.

It is kind of interesting, though. Kon brought a notebook in order to look the part of someone who belongs at a youth art contest, so he absently doodles a few sketches of what he thinks Robin, Batman and Superman would look like if they went to the Middle Kingdom to have their portraits done. 

After the talk, they sneak away from the group to explore the deck of the ship. It's not really sneaking, since nobody really cares where they go, but it's more fun to pretend they could get in trouble for it.

It's cold on deck, and windy, enough to nearly strip Kon's glasses until they find a spot that's sheltered by the wheelhouse. His hair keeps going in his eyes and he almost uses his x-ray to see through it.

"You okay?" he asks Tim as he smooths out his hair. The harbor is choppy even a short distance out, and he doesn't want Tim to get sick on top of everything else he's been through this semester.

Tim shrugs, but he looks fine, if a little flushed from the wind in his face. His heartbeat is a little rapid, as well, but not in a stressed way. "Gotta love that perfect Gotham weather," he laughs. To Kon's surprise, he's genuinely enjoying himself, despite all the sarcastic fronts he's putting up.

The wind gradually dies down a little, so they head out to the bow of the ship as the sun peeks through the clouds. Tim gets his camera out and, after knotting the strap carefully around his wrist, starts taking pictures of the shoreline.

Kon keeps an eye on the camera: he knows how important it is to Tim, he could see how much it hurt him to offer to let Superboy crush it to protect his privacy (and, god, Kon wishes he could explain how much that meant to him). If it gets blown overboard he'll just have to think of a way to retrieve it without losing his cover. He can go back for it later, mail it with an anonymous note saying it washed up on shore or something.

There are a few other kids and teachers on deck, but Kon is so focused on Tim that he doesn't pay attention to them until he suddenly hears running footsteps approaching.

"Oh my gosh! Kelly! Hey!"

Kon just has time to brace himself before a blonde girl in a caped Shazam hoodie slams into his side, locking her arms around his neck.

Kon reaches back, putting a hand under her knee to hold her up. "Steph?"

Tim turns and blinks. "Who's your friend?" he asks. "I thought—" he trails off, because there's no real way to end that sentence nicely.

"Oh, this is Steph," Kon says casually—he thinks for a moment about teasing Tim for almost saying he was a loser with no friends, but with the way his heartbeat kicked up he decides against it. "We go way back. Like, way back."

Steph takes a hand off Kon's neck to wave. "We were on the Oregon Trail together," she announces with complete conviction, getting a startled laugh from Tim. "Nah, I saw him wandering the streets and adopted him so Gotham wouldn't kill him. He almost knows how to lock his doors now."

"I was walking around the block. Let a guy live?"

"That's exactly what I'm trying to do, geez. Should have seen yourself that first day, man, it was tragic. In the aaaarms of an aaaaangel—"

"Where's your teammate?" Kon asks, hoping to change the subject before he can think too hard about sad puppies in cages because that hits a little too close to home, thank you. (And also because while Steph's singing isn't really that bad, it hits a lot harder on his sensitive hearing from eight inches away.) "I thought you couldn't enter solo."

"Oh, I had a teammate and everything, he's just not here. Lonnie's back in Gotham, he says, like, this contest is just a round of bread and circuses and he only took part since the educational system forced him to but he isn't going to let them display him for donations and also they're showing The Thing on TV tonight and he's working on a John Carpenter zine. So, you know, he pretended he had appendicitis. Love him, he's so freakin' weird. Like, isn't that weird?"

"Y-yeah, super weird…" Tim focuses very hard on his camera for a moment, but Kon can tell he's fighting back a laugh as he speaks.

"But I'm here, and they already issued his dining voucher, so I get two rounds at the buffet as long as I wear a different sweater." She looks at the deck and suddenly seems to realize Kon is still holding her up. She glances up at his face, and then to the deck again, her brows coming together in a startled curve. "Uh…down, please?"

"Sorry," Kon says quickly, and leans over so she can step down.

She punches him in the arm, and luckily he sees it coming fast enough to rock with the impact. "Wow, you really work out under those Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood sweaters. So who's your little nerd friend?" Steph points at Tim and winks.

Tim blinks rapidly for a moment, then holds out a hand and steps forward. "Timothy Drake. Steph, right? A pleasure."

"Oh wow, fancy…" Steph holds out the edge of her cape and makes a little bow over Tim's hand. "Stephanie Brown, North Gotham High. An honor, milord. As long as we're competing with the other cities I'm on your side but if it comes down to us two you understand we have to be mortal enemies."

"Oh, of course," Tim replies. "Klingons do not surrender.”

"Excellent. There can be only one."

They end the handshake with a firm nod and playfully vicious glare. It's good to see that his Gotham friends get along, or at least the non-costumed ones. Kon still feels bad about the argument Spoiler and Robin had in his living room, even if he didn't do anything to start it except try to buy some hot dogs.

"Do you want to show me your statue and I'll show you mine?" Steph suggests. "They're not officially displayed until tomorrow but the room isn't guarded or anything…"

"Oh hell yes," Kon replies.

"I am a master of all stealth techniques," Tim says.

"Cool, let's go."

As Steph is humming the Mission Impossible theme the whole way, their infiltration is hardly top secret, but indeed nobody seems to care that much. The lights are off, but the door is unlocked, there isn't even a Keep Out sign, and a couple kids from Bludhaven are already taking pictures in another corner with a statue that looks like a pile of toxic waste had a baby with a hair metal band.

"Wait, oh my god." Steph stops dead in the middle of the floor. Tim walks into her back, and Kon barely stops himself from slamming into Tim and crushing them both. "Timothy. Tim Drake? Timothy Wayne?"

She whirls, her mouth dropping open as she points at Tim.

"See I told you it was obvious," Tim whispers to Kon, then raises his hands in a shrug. "Okay, Sherlock, you caught me. But I'm trying to keep it on the down low, okay? We don't actually donate to this organization but that doesn't mean they won't think it's flattering instead of insulting to shove the prize at me to gain some brownie points with my dad, even though Kelly did basically all the work."

"Not all the work," Kon says.

Tim steps on his foot firmly but Kon barely feels it through his shoe. "Fine, the majority of the work. Winning's one thing but I want it to matter, okay?"

Steph folds her arms for a moment, frowning as if in deep thought, then smiles. "Okay, your secret's safe with me. Can I at least tell my mom though? I think she has a People cover of your dad taped up inside her closet."

"Uh." Tim freezes up for an instant and Kon hears his breathing stutter. "Sure? Just never say that about Bruce again, please, oh god."

She laughs. "No promises, I will do anything to defeat you, remember? Okay, let's see the competition."

"Ladies first," Tim says, with a biting smile that says he's only suggesting it because he sees a tactical advantage.

"Oh, I'm no lady, Little Lord Fauntleroy."

"Please, I insist."

They seem to be enjoying their banter just a little too much, so to save time Kon steps past them and yanks the cover off their statue's case. "Voila."

Steph whistles. "Damn." She steps around it to get a better look at the wings. "Who took the pictures? They're nice."

Tim raises his hand and Steph nods thoughtfully. "Good job. I almost regret that I will crush you."

"It's got lights, too," Kon explains. "But we can't unlock the case, they'll turn them on tomorrow when the contest actually starts. How about yours?" He replaces the cloth over the case very carefully, since he has a horrifying image of the domino chain that could happen if he slipped up with his powers in here.

"Yeah, it's over here," Steph says, leading them about eight cases closer to the center of the room. "Please understand this is a very serious work of very serious art and take it very seriously."

She yanks the cover off with a matador flourish and takes a bow.

"Oh my god," Kon gasps instantly.

"It's." Tim tilts his head. "It's impactful." His tone is dry but his heartbeat is exhilarated and a broad smile has installed itself on his face. "What do you call it?"

"It's called Untitled #7."

"What happened to Untitleds one through six?" Kon asks.

"Nothing, Lonnie just thought seven sounded cooler."

"Can…" Tim does one of those half-hissed breathing exercises to rein himself in. "Can you walk us through what's going on here? Seriously. Because this is very serious." He nods. Seriously.

"I appreciate how seriously you are taking our serious art," Steph says. "Well, as you can see here," she continues, in a smooth imitation of an Antiques Roadshow expert (Kon only knows this because it’s Clark’s favorite show so he sits through it to be nice sometimes), "This is a late 20th century multimedia folk sculpture of Batman and Catwoman getting married."

The figures are set up inside a smashed TV that has been filled with doll furniture to make a diorama of a cathedral, complete with Shrinky Dinks stained glass windows that Kon can tell have lighting set up behind them. The outside of the TV is spray painted red and black and draped with crime scene tape, with a chalk outline of a bat taking up the perimeter of the base.

"This is beautiful," Tim says with genuine sentiment. "How did you get the idea?"

"It's a commentary on the media's obsession with superheroes or something. Or, like, mainly because I had these toys and my mom had an old TV she let us smash and then Lonnie found an excuse for it."

“Catwoman?” Kon says.

"Oh yeah, I know Catwoman has that like, on again off again kidnapping thing with that dumb W…” she flounders for a moment and shoots Tim an apologetic glance. “Uh, no offense Tim, with your dad.”

“None taken, we’re used to it,” Tim says as he crouches to focus on the happy couple. Or, well, Catwoman looks about as happy as a Barbie can and Batman looks like…Batman.

“But she really deserves better, don't you think?"

“Far be it from me to say my dad isn’t a catch but it would definitely reduce the kidnapping rate around our neighborhood. Why is Batman in a dress…?"

"It's his special day, he wants to look pretty."

Tim nods and continues circling the statue, taking photos from every possible angle.

Steph points at the top of the structure. “I think Lonnie stole the caution tape from a Riddler scene,” she says. “He’s a madman, I swear.”

"What's that in the back?" Tim asks.

“Oh, Superboy is officiating.”

Tim looks up at her, still crouched in front of the pedestal holding his camera up. He raises an eyebrow.

“Lonnie’s dog ate Superman,” Steph explains. “But I think he also represents, like, the MTV generation or something, I don’t know, I wasn’t really listening, The Real World was on.”

Tim hums thoughtfully then stands and looks towards Kon. "Kelly, are you okay? You're coughing a lot."

"A-am I?" Kon smothers a last cough behind his fist and slowly moves his hand away when he's sure his expression won't give him away. “Wow. This is. Really…something.”

“Thanks, you can just mail me the Nobel Prize,” Steph grins as she delicately replaces the cover. “You wanna go hit up the board game room or something before dinner?”

Chapter Text

“So, do we want to flip for which side, or what?”

Tim shrugs. “Whatever you want is fine with me,” he says.

Kon kicks his duffle bag further under the bed: the last thing he needs is Tim getting up for a glass of water during the night and tripping over a Superboy suit. “Uh, okay, I’ll take the window side then.” It doesn’t make much difference, but in some kind of emergency if he has to make a super-entrance in a hurry it might save him a second or two.

“Cool.” Tim drops the backpack in the space between the bed and the wall on the other side, then lifts the pink suitcase onto the bed.

And Steph thought I was working out, Kon thinks. He knows how heavy the thing was from carrying it on board the ship, but while Tim clearly has to put in some effort his heart rate and breathing even within a few moments.

Kon can’t actually see through the suitcase, he realizes to his own surprise. Not that he wants to snoop into what Tim brought, of course, but his hold on the x-ray slips a little bit as he looks down at it and he can’t help noticing that nothing happens. But it only stands to reason that Gotham manufacturing is just as bad about lead paint as its sanitation department is about toxic clay.

Tim glances at Kon’s face then back down at the suitcase, and seems to notice the color for the first time. Of course a normal human boy would just be curious about why it was pink, and not literally trying to look through it. “It was the first thing I could find when I was packing,” he says with a shrug. “Maybe Dick’s paying me back for all those table settings.”

Luckily Tim is too caught up on his own issues to wonder why Kon was equally panicked about going on the cruise. Kon hasn't figured out a good cover story yet, and 'if my picture ends up anywhere near the Metropolis media circuit Lois Lane is going to recognize me as Superboy and she's going to be upset I lied to her and even more upset that I asked Tana instead of her to help with putting together my secret identity so I can kiss a new Gameboy for Christmas goodbye' is definitely not going to work.

Of course he planned to tell Lois eventually—but he wants it to be after it's all over, so he can present her with proof he's able to have a normal life. If she catches him in the middle of it, he’ll just be giving more reasons for them to hover over him all the time, and maybe they’d be right, but he doesn’t want to give up now.

They’ll just have to lose the contest so he and Tim can hide in the crowd without their famous family causing them chaos.

Steph joins them for dinner, which is nice since it means they have something else to discuss besides the bed thing. 

Tim seems pretty okay with it so far. Maybe some of that is him having a lot of other things to worry about at the moment, and maybe it's a standard thing for normal human boys on school trips. 

Of course that assumes that both normal human boys actually are normal human boys, who aren't into other normal human boys, and that they haven't already had a supervillain-evil-gas-fueled makeout session. 

Kon's biggest worry at the moment is that he might be about to discover some Kryptonian traits Clark forgot (or 'forgot') to mention. Luthor, though he was pretty happy to keep setting Kon up in fake relationships for press attention, never really got around to having The Talk with him in detail. Which, while it was definitely for the best, is currently causing some problems since Kon is pretty sure Clark might die if he had to explain how Kryptonian sex works. And Kon would definitely die if he had to ask Lois. 

And maybe hybrids are different. Maybe he’s going to suddenly find out he has praying mantis instincts and start ripping heads off like in Alien—

"So Kelly told me Robin keeps turning up around his place," Steph says around a mouthful of pasta salad. "That's so cool, have you ever seen him, Tim?"

"Uh…never up close," Tim says. "We were there when Clayface attacked the mall. And Nightwing bailed us out once," he adds, gesturing between himself and Kon, "but I was kind of…zapped. So I don't remember that too well."

"You called him a Cookie Monster," Kon prompts, grabbing on to the chance to think about something else.

"Oh god, don't tell me you remember that too." Tim groans and rests his face in his hands.

"Um." Too, Tim said, meaning he definitely remembers more of what happened than he's been letting on. Kon has suspected that for a while, but this is about the worst time to have it confirmed. "A little, yeah." Kon shrugs, wishing he hadn’t latched onto that topic so fast. Time to steer the conversation away from himself and Tim. "how about you, Steph, many hero sightings?"

“I thought you’d never ask,” Steph beams, reaching into her back pocket and taking out a wallet entirely full of accordion-folded photo inserts. “These are probably the best ones,” she says, flipping to a strip in the back and unfurling it across the table.

Tim and Kon almost bump heads as they lean in to look. About half of the photos are grainy, distant cutouts from massively blown-up prints, but several are up close and personal. Very personal.

“When did you run into Huntress?” Kon asks, recognizing the midriff-baring purple costume from Jen's notebook. Huntress, a slightly strained smile under her mask, is staring awkwardly into the camera and waving as Steph beams next to her with both thumbs up.

“Oh, she saved our class when our bus got taken hostage last year,” Steph says. “I got the driver to take a picture of us. Good thing she was so close because the Bats took, like, seventeen kinds of forever to turn up. After that she signed my English textbook and told me to do my homework. Ms. Bertinelli gave me a B+ on my essay when I finished it and I really think after all I went through I should have got an A.”

“Very inconsiderate,” Tim agrees, though it sounds like he's trying not to laugh.

Steph points to another photo. “And then this one is Green Lantern, he came to do an art seminar while I was staying with my grandparents in Illinois a couple summers ago. Flash did this event for kids with incarcerated parents in Metropolis…then there's, ah heck, where did Superboy go…”

Kon freezes up, dreading her pulling out a photo from the Metro Rainforest Cafe with Tim in the background and the conversation about coincidental encounters that would be sure to follow. But instead, what she holds up is a string of distant shots that were clearly taken from the back of a crowd; kids, teens, scattered bored parents. 

It looks like some kind of small outdoor arena, maybe at a mall, but that doesn’t narrow it down too much considering how many events Superboy does, even just since the trial and his independent rebrand. Then he sees one with Tana holding a wiggly beagle puppy up to his face as he laughs and tries to protect his sunglasses—Steph must have been at their Adopt Don’t Shop live radio event from last Thanksgiving. That one had been fun. Livewire turned up but she didn't even trash the place, just pouted when they wouldn't let her leave with an armful of fluffy dachshund mixes.

“He’s so cute.” Steph grins dreamily, her usual almost defiant confidence softening as she leans her elbows on the table and rests her chin in her hands. “Do you think he’d like me?”

“Who wouldn’t like you?” Tim says.

“You deserve better,” Kon says at the same time. “But also what he said.” He looks up from the photos to see Tim staring at him, his blue eyes suddenly sharp and intent. “What?”

“I—nothing,” Tim says quickly. “Just remembered—something important I have to take care of. When I get back.”

He's still staring at Kon’s eyes, leaning forward across his plate a little: he doesn't even seem to notice that his sweater is dipping into his jello. They seem to have left normal human boy territory. Kon would really like a field guide to where they are now, because he has no idea how to navigate what is happening.

“Aw, thanks,” Steph says. She takes a few thoughtful bites of her pizza, then casually flips to another strip of photos. “Oh yeah and then there’s this new chick Spoiler she’s like pretty cool and stuff.” 

Giving all of Steph's Spoiler photos, mostly taken from rooftops (with timers, Kon assumed), and some of them carefully composited so that Stephanie Brown, Very Normal Girl, is also in the frame, the attention they deserve delays the inevitable end of dinner for another hour. 

After that Kon goes with Tim to take pictures out on deck. The ship is nearing Metropolis, but Gotham is still visible in the distance, its skyline jagged and dark under the moonlight compared to Metropolis’ sweeping chrome curves.

Kon never imagined he'd miss Gotham so much. Not just because of Robin, Tim, and the kids at GCHS—he’s found so much to care about in the stubborn, determined city itself.

“Whoa, watch it!” Kon grabs the back of Tim's puffy coat as he leans out for a better shot and nearly pitches over the railing. “Your dad doesn't need the life insurance money that bad, does he?”

“I'm fine,” Tim grumbles. He leans even more perilously as Kon clutches the crisp-textured synthetic fabric. 

It sort of…crunches in his grip, which his Kryptonian senses do not like at all. No wonder Clark usually sticks with wool. Tim of course doesn't realize that issue, and calmly snaps a few more shots of the division between the Gotham and Metro waterfronts. A little too calmly, Kon thinks, since as far as Tim knows he's entrusting himself completely to a normal human boy with absolutely no ability to fly. As far as Tim knows Kelly might not even be able to swim.

“Are you sure you're fine?”

“I know what I'm doing.”

“Aquaman stays away from Gotham for a reason,” Kon says, x-raying the water and quickly turning it off since he does not want to know the specifics.

“Sure, sure.” 

Tim finally climbs down from the railing: Kon lets go of his coat and takes a couple steps back, so he isn't obviously in his space. Tim yawns as he slips the camera back into an inner pocket.

“Time to turn in?” Kon hopes his nervousness doesn't slip into his voice.

“I guess.”

When they get back to the suite, Tim grabs some pajamas out of his suitcase and ducks into the bathroom to change. It's not like Kon was hoping to get a look or anything, and if he tries to think about it sensibly this is also the most convenient way of keeping Tim from seeing his nerd table friend is suspiciously well-built, almost like he was manufactured that way…

Nope, still stings. Pointing out to himself that even Robin hasn't seen much yet only helps a little.

He isn't reaching out with his hearing on purpose, only trying not to think about that, when he realizes how weird Tim's breathing is. Rapid, and a little muffled, like he's holding a hand over his mouth. It sounds like he's standing in front of the mirror: Kon tries to decide whether it's loud enough a normal boy would notice as he quickly changes into his pajamas. The red-yellow-blue stripe pattern was probably Tana trying to be funny.

By now Tim has shifted into one of those breathing exercises. It's definitely gone on long enough for even a normal human boy to notice, so he gives the door a quick tap. “All good?”

“Yeah fine!”

His heartbeat says things are not fine, but Kon decides this is the most he can question him without making it weird. “I'm…just going to turn in then?”

“You got it!”

Despite all the stress of everything going on, Kon is asleep even before Tim slides into bed next to him.

Kon’s first thought, when he opens his eyes in the lab, is aw, heck, again?

He wouldn't say he's fine, or used to it, but the dreams don't bother him as much now. But he could really do without the constant reminders of how different he is. He knows, okay, he's got that pretty well covered.

Luthor isn't in this one; that’s what really bothers him, when Luthor keeps turning up like he's trying to stake a claim on Kon's mind if he can't have the rest of him. But this is further back, and Luthor never came around the lab in the earlier stages. Or not while Kon was conscious, anyway.

The earliest phases, before they really started testing anything, and before Kon realized his life was on the line—before he really understood there was a life to be on the line—weren’t so bad. There was always music playing somewhere, and the liquid-filled tank was relaxing to float in. Kind of nice, really, if he doesn't think too much about all the other stuff. He does still miss floating in his starlight pool in the penthouse.

So if it's just this, he decides, he can put up with it. There's some Celine Dion playing in the distance, and he's floating. Maybe being in the gently shifting ship brought the old sensations back—whatever started this, he can just wait it out.

Then he hears something else, very quietly under the music. A heartbeat, and soft choked-off noises.

That's definitely new.

“Um, hello?” he tries. He shouldn't be able to speak in the tank, but it's a dream, so that doesn't matter. “We're kind of going off script here…”

Nothing happens to stop Kon from breaking the scenario, so he pulls a fist back and smashes the glass of the tank.

Once he's on the cement floor, he looks around, wringing out his hair with one hand. It's still the lab, sort of, but now that he isn’t playing along with the dream-script, he can see it’s going fuzzy around the edges. The heartbeat is somewhere beyond there.

Kon floats forward until he hits the boundary of the dream’s lab set. “Anybody there?”

When he reaches out and touches the fuzzy patch, the whole room dissolves around him, drifting away like a fan offset is blowing dry ice smoke away and leaving only a gray void. Only the gray, Kon, and…

Kon almost doesn’t see him, at first, since his face is shadowed by his dark hair and the black cape melts into the background. He looks past him twice before realizing what direction the heartbeat is coming from and seeing a tiny patch of yellow lining.

“Birdie!" Kon doesn’t dare to hesitate in case Robin dissolves next: he barely remembers to slow down enough for humans to handle.

Robin gasps as Kon tackles him and they land on whatever passes for the floor of the gray space. The bright gold lining of the cloak spills around Robin like a spotlight as Kon looks down at him, leather half-gloves gripping his arms just under the short sleeves.

For a few moments they just stare at each other. It’s a dream, Kon knows, a collage of random electrical impulses in his brain as it winds down for the night, but somehow it still feels like more than that. Robin feels like more than that, surprisingly solid and warm, but Kon’s scared to take his hands off him in case he vanishes as soon as the contact breaks.

“Are you okay?” is the first thing he can think of to say.

He hears Robin blink behind the mask, and his lips shift tentatively as if he’s trying to figure out what word is going to come out. Kon thinks about kissing him, because after all, this is his dream, why shouldn’t he— 

“A lot of people around me get hurt.”

It somehow answers a whole lot of things about the question without answering anything in the actual question at all. “I’m invulnerable?” Kon points out. “I thought you knew this.”

“Nobody’s invulnerable,” Robin says. He shifts a little in Kon’s hold, bringing his arms up so he can rest his hands lightly on Kon’s sleeves. “It’s statistics. Probability distributions.”

“I swear to heck, Robin, it’s very you but if you are about to do a lot of math all over this romantic dream reunion I’m trying to have here—”

Robin laughs, then looks startled that he did. He breaks off after only a few seconds, but it feels like some of the grayness of the space is shifting away from them just a little, and the gold of Robin’s cloak seems just a little brighter.

Kon leans a little closer, but Robin still looks uncertain so he decides not to push it, even if this is his dream. “Robin, I don’t know what happened that’s got you worried, but I really can take care of myself.”

Robin bites his bottom lip. Kon tries not to stare too obviously, knowing he’s doing a really bad job of it.

“I haven’t been good for anybody’s probability distributions lately.”

Kon sighs and reaches up to run a hand through Robin’s hair. It’s not gelled, and he vaguely feels like this should mean something, but that’s not important at the moment. “Sure, and the probability distribution of me being happy without you is about zilch, so maybe you could let me worry about that instead of just vanishing?”

Robin frowns. It’s really unfair that every expression he makes looks so kissable at this distance. “I—It’s not fair for me to—”

“None of this is fair,” Kon interrupts. “The world isn’t fair. Let’s not make it worse, you know? It’s not fair to deny me—”

“Okay, you were doing really good until you started quoting Alanis Morrisette, because that is kind of not the point of that song.”

“Wow, way to ruin the moment.”

“It is in fact the opposite of the point of that song.”

Robin would probably know, because it's his speakers Kon remembers the song from, but Kon has a reputation to keep up. “Which one of us has a radio show again?”

Robin laughs again, a little less strained this time, and his lenses do the little flicker that Kon has learned means he’s rolling his eyes. He reaches up to grab Kon’s collar and pulls him down.

Finally—

At which point the cruise ship’s whistle blows and Kon wakes up.

Chapter Text

When Kon jolts awake, the first thing he realizes is that Tim isn't in the bed next to him. Worry flares for a moment—what if he went up for a sunrise photo and slipped?

Then he realizes his heartbeat is still in the room and looks closer.

Tim is sitting on the floor, leaning against the mattress with his arms resting loosely on his knees, his forehead braced on one wrist.

“Tim?” When Kon crawls over to his side of the bed, it still feels a little warm, so he must have been under the covers until only a short time before.

Tim raises his head and runs a hand down his face, blinking quickly a few times behind his hand though Kon can still hear it. “Morning.”

“You okay?”

Tim takes a breath and opens his mouth confidently, then hesitates. Finally he sighs and wiggles one hand. “Eh…”

“If there's anything I can do?”

Tim blinks again. “You’ve—you’ve been great. Thanks.”

“Any time.”

“Listen, I'm sorry for being weird lately.” Tim slowly pushes himself up and walks over to open his suitcase sitting on one of the chairs.

“You're not weird,” Kon says. Tim stares at him evenly over the navy blue blazer he's holding up. His hair is messed up from where he must have been running his hands through it before Kon woke up. “Okay, you're a little weird.”

Tim doesn't laugh, but he comes close to smiling. “There's been—stuff. Actually, there was something I was meaning to talk to you about.”

“Sure,” Kon says. “I’m all—”

Someone knocks on the door. “Timothy Drake? Kelly Clark?”

“Oh cripes Ms. Fradon just got here.” Tim grabs blindly for a shirt and slacks as Kon dives for his own duffel bag.

With Ms. Fradon comes the other half of the contestants, the ones too far south to board in Gotham. And with them comes the media, to cover the presentations and special awards that morning and the official prize ceremony later that night.

With them does not, Kon sees with relief, come Clark Kent and Lois Lane. They must be still in Colorado, or the Planet decided they were too important to cover an event like this. Jimmy Olsen comes instead, though, so he still has to be careful in case he starts showing the pictures around at the office. And just careful in general, because stuff always seems to happen around Jimmy.

The chaos of another three dozen teens joining the crowd on the boat, as well as just as many accompanying teachers and chaperones and for some godforsaken reason a barbershop quartet, means that there's absolutely no time for Tim and Kon to talk in private during the breakfast reception. 

But at least it means everyone is distracted enough that they can sneak up to the deck with their plates of scrambled eggs and strawberry french toast sticks. It's no less crowded since about half the kids also had that idea, but at least it doesn't have any of their teachers or any photographers Kon personally knows. (He vaguely recognizes a couple from Superboy's tabloid days, but none give Kelly Clark, Normal Human Boy, a second glance.)

Though until now most of the kids have been pretty friendly with the competition, the tension goes up once the Met kids are added to the mix. Kon has never interacted with Metropolis teenagers without his celebrity Super-bubble, but now he realizes there's definitely kind of an attitude that comes with knowing you can claim the Man of Steel. 

Especially if you can also afford the finest in prep fashion. One of the preps shoves Steph and for a second Kon thinks he's going to have to prevent an attempted bear spraying, but while he's still debating firing up the speed another Metropolis team steps in to pull her away.

“—say that again about Huntress!”

“What, that she's Gotham's favorite skank?” a stocky boy in a Met Prep hat yells back. “And Nightwing—”

By the time Kon notices that Tim isn't standing next to him any more, he's already taken two long strides down the railing and grabbed a large soda cup from a Bludhaven girl in a black leather jacket. As Kon stares, Tim walks towards him and casually hurls the cup up and backwards in a graceful arc, still balancing his plate with the coffee cup in his other hand.

Kon feels the railing start to give way under his fingers and quickly loosens his grip.

“Whoops,” Tim says cheerfully, rejoining Kon at the rail as the Metro preps flee the shower of Sprite. “Hand slipped.”

“Uh,” Kon says, intelligently. He hopes Superman is busy with something very far away because right now he's pretty sure his heartrate is audible from Nebraska.

It all happened so quickly and so smoothly that nobody else even seems to notice except the Bludhaven girl and her teammate, who quickly walk away after playful salutes.

“Thanks for the save,” Steph says breathlessly as she jogs over, followed by the other two Metro kids. “Don't worry, they're cool, I know Cindy from stuff. Kelly, Tim,” she adds, pointing.

“We were at Shazam's Magical Mythology Library Hour,” Cindy supplies, smoothing down her hair. Now that Kon thinks about it, he recognizes her from some of Steph's Shazam photos. “Last year, right? I snuck you in?”

“Yeah, that. I didn't have a younger sibling to go with so we shared,” she stage whispers to Kon. Tim shakes his head with a fake-disappointed sigh.

“Anyway, I am so sorry you ran into the Prep squad,” Cindy continues. “Ugh, I can still smell the J Crew from here…They got like three teams in, somebody's totally bribing the Metro judging board. Oh yeah, and this is Lucas.”

Cindy's teammate gives an intent nod. “What you have to do is insult the Metro heroes right back. It's like sports.”

Steph shrugs and waves towards Cindy's S-badge flannel scarf. “Yeah I get you but how? They've got freaking Superman, man! What do I insult him about?”

“Oh…yeah that is kinda hard…”

Kon tries to match everyone else's baffled expressions, which is difficult since he knows Superman once got so focused on a game of Connect Four that he accidentally fused the pieces to the frame with heat vision and had to sneak out to buy his parents a new set before they noticed, only for them to be waiting on the porch when he got back. 

(“Ma, please!” Clark begged, half-hiding his face with one large hand. “Do you have to tell everyone that story? I was fourteen!”

“I just don't want him thinking he has to live up to perfection,” Mrs. Kent said sweetly, and kept dishing out mashed potatoes. “Would you like to see his first day of kindergarten photos?”)

But stuff like that, or eating jello salad and thinking that makes him seem like less of an alien somehow, is just what makes Clark so Clark. Sure, Kon might joke about him to Robin, if he could find Robin outside his dreams, but that's a lot different from yelling it across a cruise boat like it’s actually a reason to think less of him.

“What about Lois Lane?” Cindy suggests. “There's got to be something.”

Lois does keep bugging him to play the Beastie Boys when he's doing DJ sessions for the radio, which is insane, obviously, but not a crime or anything last time he checked. A modern independent woman has a right to bad taste.

“Supergirl is, is uh…” Steph folds her arms. “Hm. Okay there's the horse, but…”

“Oh no, the horse is cool, definitely,” Cindy says, and everyone nods.

Kon has to admit even he has trouble thinking of anything for Kara.

It hits him that maybe he's being suspiciously silent. “What about Superboy?” he says, a little too loud, and then wishes he hadn't. 

Sure, he knows the radio show gets good ratings, and his events are popular, but most of his fans are outside Metropolis. And it's not like he hasn't noticed the occasional threads on the message boards online making fun of Superboy for selling out.

After all, they already have Superman—

“He's fine?” Lucas says. “Like, kind of a showoff maybe…”

“He can fly,” Steph protests. “And he's been in movies! Who wouldn't?” 

“Besides, how many people can beat the Flash at Mario Kart?” Tim says.

A lot, Kon thinks, remembering the last time he was in the Hall of Justice cafeteria, but he appreciates the defense anyway. Especially from Tim.

“Fair, fair. I didn't say that was bad.”

“He does play that one song from Doc Hollywood too much,” Cindy says. “So.”

Oh, ouch, got me there, Kon thinks, wishing he could laugh without giving the whole thing away. Then Steph giggles, and they all join in.

After that, the ice is officially broken, and they start talking about the projects they entered in the contest. Though Met Prep has the advantage of numbers, Cindy and Lucas' public school has a historic art program.

“And welding equipment,” Lucas grins. “So it's all made of stuff we found combing the waterfront down by the old warehouses.”

“Yeah, we have this old casket as the centerpiece, it's totally rusted shut so it's like, maybe there's treasure inside, maybe it's nothing, you can't tell by looking at it.” Cindy cups her hands together like the shell of a clam as Lucas waves his hands around it to show the shape.

“And then there's a lot of chains and wires twisted together like a wave holding it up.”

“Our teacher was worried there might be lead in it since that area of town is so old so we had to spray sealant all over once we finished,” Cindy adds. “I think it made it too shiny but what can you do?”

“Yeah, what can you,” Kon says, pretending he'd heard everything even though the sharp buzz of engine noise from a few joyriding speedboats is coming close enough to be distracting.

“The judging inspection is about to start,” Tim interrupts, sliding his sleeve up to show his watch. “We've just got time to get dressed up and get in place.”

Kon doesn't dress up for the ceremonies, really, no tie or anything, but he does put on the nicest sweater Tana helped him pick out, a bulky pastel blue pullover with dense mohair cables.

“So I figure if we're trying not to attract attention too much this is fi—oh,” he finishes faintly as he turns around and sees Tim.

Tim is adjusting the cuffs of a buttonless red suede blazer, cut to hug his form effortlessly without looking too tight—his shoulders are wider than Kon assumed under his usual puffy jackets and flannel layers. 

The slim slacks and silk shirt underneath are black, he has honest-to-heck cuff links, and Kon is definitely, obviously staring by now.

Tim looks down at himself (he's still wearing the normal sneakers, Kon notices with some relief) and back up at Kon with a startlingly shy smile. “Too much? Alfred packed it, I didn't want to disappoint him.”

“I, uh—” Kon swallows. The room suddenly seems impossibly small. “Yeah, maybe skip the tie if you brought one…”

Tim picks up a thin gold tie from the back of one of the chairs and winces. “Cripes, I think Bruce wore this to Buckingham Palace once, definitely too much.”

“You look fine like you are,” Kon says as Tim turns to put the tie back in his backpack.

Tim gives Kon a sidelong look and Kon wonders if he's imagining the sudden intensity in his eyes. “So do you,” he says, his voice dropping a little.

Kon thinks about dodging with a joke—wow, did you borrow that line from Bruce too?—but he can tell from Tim's slightly elevated heartbeat that he's being earnest. Even if things can't last once ‘Kelly’ disappears, that's no reason to let Tim think he doesn't care. “Thanks,” he says, “that means a lot.”

Tim smiles like he just said something incredibly important. “Come on, partner, let's go lose this contest.”

As they near the end of the hall, Kon listens ahead and suddenly realizes that he's in real danger of walking straight into Jimmy Olsen when they turn the corner. And Jimmy might not have figured out Clark yet, but that doesn't mean he's dumb enough to afford being careless at the last minute. For one thing, if he was exposed right now Tim would probably think it was some kind of stunt for the radio show: he can't risk hurting him like that.

“Hey, Tim, hold up,” Kon calls, reaching into the pockets of his khakis as Tim turns. Hopefully the sweater hides the print of the keys. “Left my keys in the room. Can I borrow yours for a minute?”

Tim shrugs and tosses him the room keys and Kon half-dives to catch them before they land a yard in front of his shoes. “Hurry up, I need to hide behind you or somebody will recognize me.”

“Right behind you, honest.” Kon spins Tim's keys around his finger and jogs back down the hall.

Once he's in the room, he figures he needs to give it about five minutes to make it seem like he was actually looking for something. Instead, he uses the time to try to process the tangle he's gotten himself into, though it's hard over the buzzing noise from the speedboats.

Right now, he just wishes Robin was here, mostly. He would know just what to do about a mess like this, since he seems to have plans for everything. Unfortunately since Robin is part of the mess, Kon couldn't very well explain it to him even if he was here. He isn't even sure how he would explain it, since he's still trying to figure out how he got to this point himself.

At least when Clark was having his secret identity love struggles he was only involved with one person.

This is seriously too much for one clone. “Oh wow, what a laugh,” Kon mutters to himself. The curtains are drawn and the door is still locked, so he lets himself float, curling up in the middle of the room and ignoring the obnoxious noise of the boats outside.

…Or he would be ignoring the noise if it was still there. At least one thing is going his way this morning.

Just as he uncurls and drops to the floor, Kon rocks as almost every heartbeat in the ship ramps up at once. He hears screams from the ballroom a few seconds later, and then, drowning out everything else and making his head spin, the sharp stabbing whine of a Kryptonian-summoning signal watch.

Shit, Kon thinks, we've been Jimmied.

Chapter Text

At times like this, Kon knows the best idea is to keep an eye on the situation and wait for Clark to arrive. Kon hasn't figured out yet how to mirror the way Clark manages to overwhelm a situation: maybe it's a size thing. Maybe it’s the sunlight calm Superman gives off. 

Half the time when Clark drops out of the sky into a room full of gunmen everyone freezes and drops the weapons without even taking a shot. Superboy doesn't get the same respect, not yet. If he barges into the ballroom right now, with the signal watch disrupting his senses, he's more likely to set off a wild firefight than actually help. There are way too many people crowded into the ballroom for him to afford any risks.

After a few more seconds, the signal watch drops from its initial high burst to two-second-interval pings, so Kon can finally hear clearly what's going on. There's nobody close enough to see what he's up to, so he picks up the bag with the Superboy suit and kicks out the window to their cabin.

His person clothes, pale blue fuzzy sweater and light slacks, blend in perfectly with the sky once he has a hundred feet of height. The hijackers have guards at the front and stern of the ship, but they're watching the skies over land, not straight up.

Two minutes so far and no sign of Clark. Either he's out of range, or in the middle of something he can't set down, like a derailed train or something. He might have super-speed and super-hearing, but there's still only one of him, and Kon can't hear him anywhere near the city. Kara’s a no-show too, so she's most likely out in space somewhere with her friends, or doing a school assignment in the 23rd century so she doesn't have to worry about deadlines.

It's all up to the clone. Great.

Kon squints through the checkerboard of support beams between decks to count up hijackers—there’s a lot of old lead paint breaking up his vision, because of course there is. There are around a dozen hijackers as far as he can tell, just enough to crowd onto the two small speedboats tied to a service ladder. From the brightly painted logos, the boats must have been stolen from a Metro waterskiing rental. Besides the two gunmen guarding the deck, there’s one in the wheelhouse forcing the captain to steer further out to sea, two watching the rest of the crew in the below deck berths, and the remaining seven in the ballroom.

In the further distance, he can hear the engine of another boat headed their direction, so there's only so long he can wait before the hijackers have reinforcements.

Once again he wishes Robin was here. Even with his super-senses, there's too much going on here for one person to keep tabs on, and if he starts something in one place it's going to kick off a dangerous chain reaction for everyone on the ship. He needs backup, and he needs someone who's used to fighting in tight spaces, someone who knows how to fight without letting bystanders get hurt.

There's a lot of people who could get hurt if he blows this.

Kon can't think why on earth anyone would bother raiding a student art competition—there aren't even any huge cash prizes, just a newspaper feature and a gift card to an art supply store. Sure, some of the art is made out of old jewelry or silverware, but you can find something nicer in any antique shop. This is clearly a professionally planned job, but they can’t possibly hope to make any real profit out of an expensive and risky enterprise like this.

…Unless they figured out one of the wealthiest teens in the Tristate was on the ship.

But that doesn't really fit either. If they are after Tim, or maybe even one of the bullies from Metro Prep, the hijackers sure aren’t putting a lot of effort into snagging their prize. Nobody seems to be looking for a particular kid, or paying attention to their hostages at all, not yet at least—a few of them are uncovering the statues one by one, but the rest of them are just standing around guarding the students, chaperones, and reporters sitting on the floor.

Jimmy is hiding under a dessert table with his camera, so hopefully he won't try anything heroic before Clark arrives. Tim is crouched with the two nicer Metro kids near Tim and Kon's statue. Steph is a few yards away, near her statue. Tim seems remarkably undisturbed about the whole thing…but he did mention being kidnapped before. Maybe he's used to it. People from Gotham seem to be used to a lot of messed up stuff in general.

Both Tim and Steph keep casting thoughtful glances towards a nearby catering door, which is the last thing Kon needs right now. Tim needs to not attract attention, and Steph needs to realize Metro goons are packing too much heat for one Spoiler to handle.

Someone who looks like the leader, since he has a fancier jacket and a bigger gun, is in the middle of a rant that doesn't make much sense, since the start of it was obscured by the signal watch. He's looking for something, and for some reason he thinks one of the Metro teams stole it from him.

Is it really asking too much for would-be super criminals to behave rationally?

Wait, I only exist because Luthor isn't rational, forget I asked, Kon thinks.

“...Perses crate washed up on the waterfront, and I know someone on this ship has it…”

It sounds like they're looking for a beach junk needle in a multimedia sculpture haystack. Or—wait, why does Perses sound so familiar?

Shit, of course Luthor has to be involved somehow. It sounds like the crew of hijackers are looking for something that fell off a boat a few months ago, so it's more of a finders keepers situation than a theft, not that the difference seems to mean much to this guy.

Maybe it's something Lex was trying to get out of the country so he could use it later. But these goons couldn't have heard about it on their own, could they? Maybe Luthor hired them to smuggle it in the first place, or maybe he figured out Kon wasn't in Europe and cooked this whole thing up to lure him out…

Kon feels his hair float up as he loses concentration and drops several feet, and forces himself to focus. Taking slow breaths, he flies up again and tries to think through everything.

Right now it doesn't really matter whether Luthor is really involved or not. The most important thing is making sure all the kids make it safely back to shore—then he can worry about the other stuff.

Besides, he can't sense any signs of Kryptonite, and he's still in the air. None of the gang seem to have any shielded containers, so if they are looking for Kryptonite even they don't know it. The only blocked-off things on the ship besides the old layers of lead paint coating the support beams are Tim's suitcase and a couple of the art pieces.

If it is Kryptonite, that can’t change anything Kon does. There are too many people in danger, so he’ll just have to deal with that when it comes to it

Hopefully whatever they’re looking for, Kryptonite or not, isn't anything dangerous to non-Supers—Robin told Kon once about trying to help Nightwing track down a dirty bomb housed inside a novelty baseball. That didn’t give him several new kinds of nightmares or anything. As long as they're not dealing with any kind of mess like that, the gang’s search will take long enough Kon can try raising Clark again.

He floats up far enough that nobody on the ship will be able to hear him and fishes for his phone. While he's waiting for Lois to pick up, he takes a look around the ocean.

In the distance, he can see the other boat he heard, heading their direction but still in the far distance, a little north of Gotham. Apart from that there's a few container ships near the Metro warehouse district, a couple yachts out in international waters, several rental boats like the stolen ones bouncing around the beach area, and a dark blue fanboat cruising around the harbor bridge.

Lois’ cell rings long enough that he starts to conclude she must be tied to some train tracks or something equally dramatic that she and Clark do when they get bored, but finally she comes on the line. “Uh…hi?”

“Lois! Hey! How are things? Still in Colorado?”

“Kon! Hi!” Lois’s voice is fuzzed with static, enough that he has trouble making out what she's saying. “Weren’t you in Europe? This is a funny time to call from Venice—”

“Yeah, uh, some stuff came up, listen, is the Supester like…busy? Right now?”

“Not too busy, but also right now is kind of—” she seems to hold the phone away from her face as the sound becomes slightly fainter. “Kal, what year is it? …What, really?”

Oh that's always great to hear in an urgent situation.

“He says 1723,” Lois reports a few seconds later. “We're trying to get evidence of archaeological sites in the path of a new dam project.”

Kon blinks. “...Oh.” Damn, how do they even have cell service? Got to love Nokia.

“Is it something really important? If you can handle things by yourself a bit longer we should be back soon, maybe half an hour or so.”

Ironically, you really can't rush time travel, so even if Kon did tell them it was an emergency, there wouldn't be much Clark could do to make it any sooner. But he can't wait half an hour, either. The gang is getting angrier and their leader is still ranting, sounding less and less reluctant to start shooting kids when nobody owns up to having stolen anything from them.

Then Steph starts to move.

“Shit!” Kon exclaims, then remembers he's on the phone. “Uh, please excuse me a situation has come up gotta go—”

“Kon, wait, is everything okay—”

Kon cuts the connection and drops towards the ship.

“Freeze, Blondie!” one of the goons yells. 

Kon can't see the action clearly with the swiss cheese of corridors and beams in the way, but he sees well enough for his heart to skip a beat when he sees the man grab—not Steph, but Tim by the arm.

Tim takes one sharp breath in as the man pulls him up onto his knees, then goes very still, not even wincing or flinching as a gun presses against his temple. Kon hears his heart rate speed up a little, and his own rockets past it.

“Drop the Nancy Drew act if you know what’s good for your friend.”

The trouble with heat vision, especially if you are a slightly less adept copy of someone who is much better at using it, is that at high levels it tends to keep going until it hits something that isn’t going to melt. Such as water.

This makes it hard to just blast into certain things.

Like, say…boats containing hundreds of people.

Even if one of those people is extremely important.

Kon freezes up, only for a couple seconds—but long enough.

“You can’t shoot him!” Steph yelps. “He’s rich!”

“They brought it!” one of the Metro preps yells at the same time, pointing at Lucas. “They have what you're looking for!”

The goon holding Tim raises the gun away from his head and Kon can breathe again. He lands behind the wheelhouse, so he can't watch the ballroom while looking out for the deck guards, but he can hear fabric rustling so probably someone is searching Tim's pockets for ID.

“Who the fuck is Tim Drake?” the goon yells. Under that, Kon hears glass breaking, probably the case for Cindy and Lucas’ statue.

“Sorry I panicked—” Steph whispers.

“Don't worry about it,” Tim whispers back. “It gives us something to work with. Good thinking.” Then he takes another slow breath. “It’s Wayne,” he announces. “I'm Bruce Wayne's son.”

That gets everyone's attention. The leader of the goons starts yelling, and Jimmy gives the signal watch another blast, thankfully for just a few seconds this time.

Cindy and Lucas keep whispering under it, which he can't entirely make out, but he can tell what they're considering—probably what Tim is considering too. Give the gang what they want, or let them think you're giving them what they want, so they'll at least go away and leave everyone else alone.

Trouble is, that never ends so well for the person who gives themselves up.

“Whatever, sure, we picked it up on the waterfront,” Lucas says after the Wayne commotion starts to die down. “Maybe it is your thing, man, we can't even get it open…”

The most worrying thing is that they might not even be wrong.

“Go find somewhere to lock up Wayne's kid,” the leader orders, waving the butt end of his rifle at Tim. “And take those two and their statue to the boats. The rest of us will leave after we figure out who else is worth anything.”

The prep kids’ heartbeats all jump up at that, but Kon can't feel any satisfaction in it. They're jerks, but they're also scared teenagers with every right to freak out when they're in a room with a lot of men waving guns.

Two of the goons escort Tim out of the ballroom. Another three leave with Cindy, Lucas, and their statue, leaving only the leader and one henchman in the ballroom. In the commotion Steph dodges behind her statue's pillar and starts crawling towards the table Jimmy's hiding under.

Now Kon has another choice. Tim's being taken further below, towards the staff quarters. Cindy and Lucas are headed towards the deck.

Leaving Tim feels awful, but…he is rich, is the thing. Now that he's revealed who he is, he's probably one of the safest people on board the ship, for now at least. Meanwhile Cindy and Lucas definitely aren't rich, and they're either bluffing about having what the gang wants, or they do have what the gang wants and don't realize it. Either way, there's nothing to stop them tossing both students out of the motorboat once they question them and break the statue up.

And with the gang splitting up, the more of them Kon can take out at once, the better.

Deck it is.

Kon slips around the wheelhouse, waiting in the shadows near where he and Tim had been taking photos just last night. Tim's heartbeat passes below him a couple levels below, flanked by two of the gang. 

Probably, Kon thinks, he isn't getting out of this with his cover identity intact. But as long as Tim is safe, that's enough. Even if he's pissed about sharing a room with a bisexual alien clone when he signed up for precisely zero of those things.

Tim’s heartbeat and breathing stay surprisingly even, but he gives a little yelp as he’s thrown against a wall. Then there’s a heavy thudding sound; the door closing on him, Kon assumes. It's hard to see through to him since he's in one of the oldest sections of the ship, with decades of paint and not a little lead.

Cindy and Lucas come out on deck, followed by several more gang members. Cindy's holding the statue to her chest like a shield, until the leader of the men escorting them grabs it away from her, brandishing a gun until she lets go. Another shoves her and Lucas towards the rail—everyone’s looking towards the water now.

This is when Spoiler sprints up the stairs to the deck.

Kon was so focused on listening to Tim that he'd missed Steph start moving, but he’s glad to see her now, since it means he’ll have help taking all the gang members on deck out before Cindy and Lucas can get hurt. Right now there are four, plus the two deck guards if they realize what’s happening. 

“Hey, who’re—agh!”

The first man who turns goes down after a blast of bear spray to the face. This immediately explains why Spoiler wears a full face mask. She gives him a couple enthusiastic kicks while he's down: Kon knows head trauma is bad but considering the guy was prepared to shoot up a boat full of teens he doesn't feel like it's an overreaction.

Steph dove into the fight so confidently that Kon forgot for a few seconds that Spoiler is a lot less durable than Robin. He shakes himself out of his surprise and prepares to back her up. 

Another of Cindy and Lucas' escort has turned on Spoiler now, and the bow guard is running towards them. Kon grabs a nearby life ring and skates it across the deck, neatly taking him out, then aims a quick blast of heat vision at the other goon Spoiler’s grappling with. He drops his gun with a startled yell and Steph promptly drives her knee up into his solar plexus.

Three down, one to go…no, two to go, since the wheelhouse guard has spotted the scuffle now.

And Steph has spotted Kelly. “Dude, they've got guns! Let me handle it!”

There goes his last chance of keeping his cover. Even though he's still carrying the bag with his suit, Kon was too preoccupied earlier to remember to change into the suit before he was seen—if he’s sunk either way, no point wasting even fractional time on it.

There’s some kind of commotion going on below decks, but Kon can’t pay attention to that, either, since everything starts happening very fast.

Spoiler leaves off kicking the guy she's downed and takes off sprinting for the wheelhouse guard. In the confusion, Lucas tackles the goon holding the statue; he lets go of it, and Lucas falls to the deck, the artwork breaking under him with a crunch. Lucas doesn’t get up, and the crunch sounded like more than metal…Kon thinks, since his hearing goes fuzzy for a second.

“Goddamn inner city kids—”

The man aims at Lucas, and Cindy starts to throw herself between them.

Kon pulls on his speed: it doesn't want to come, suddenly, but he needs it. Finally, a fraction of a second and somehow also hours later, he feels it burst through him and he moves.

It's too late now to stop him actually pulling the trigger. The most important thing is to make sure nothing ricochets into anyone who could actually be hurt. Kon wraps his hands around the gun, pressing it against the soft cables of the sweater. The closer the gun is when the bullet comes out, the more momentum Kon's body will stop, instead of letting it fly off into Cindy or Spoiler.

The gun kicks under his hands once, twice, the reports muffled in his grip.

Cindy screams behind him. The robber stumbles back with a gasp, dropping the gun.

There's a huge commotion under the deck now. The rest of the goons must be headed up, which is something Kon needs to deal with. Definitely. As soon as his head stops spinning.

Kon glances over his shoulder. His identity’s blown, but at least it was in a good cause. “Not to worry, folks, everything’s under con—”

Lucas is staring frozen at him in the middle of the shattered statue. The statue that now has a lot of dull green crystals lying under the smashed treasure chest.

“Huh.” Kon stumbles back a step. “Figures.”

His clothes feel wet all of a sudden. How did that happen? Kon puts a hand to his stomach, hoping he didn’t ruin Tana’s sweater.   

“Whoa,” Kon hears himself saying from very far away, as he stares at the red coating his hands. I could swear I was painting the kitchen yellow? Also why is it so dark in the middle of the day? “That’s…not supposed to be outside…”

He doesn’t feel it when he goes over the rail—only the brief rush of air and the cold shock of the water.

Just before the water closes over his face, he hears someone shout from the deck. “Oh my god—Kelly!”

Tim shouldn’t be out on deck, Kon thinks as he drifts downwards, the bag dragging him away from the surface. He might get shot. I need to do someth…

Chapter Text

The first thing Kon notices as he opens his eyes are his glasses drifting somewhere above him, surrounded by faint red streaks and scattered ribbons of bubbles floating up towards the surface.

Kon stares fuzzily, then realizes that’s all coming from him. Because he’s bleeding. A lot, probably.

That’s new.

He’s not really a fan.

His side feels like it’s on fire, for one. It’s so much worse than any pain he’s felt before, even when his fellow clone blasted him with heat vision. He can feel every bit of damage the bullets did when they went through him—and the way his body is trying to repair the damage, which is almost worse.

Emphasis on trying, because while he doesn't feel the infectious burn of embedded Kryptonite, when he glances down there’s still plenty of blood swirling around his waist.

His lungs are starting to burn, too.

Air. Right. He needs air.

Sunlight might help too.

Easy enough to say, but the air and light is up there and Kon's down here and that doesn't look like it's about to change.

Looks like he got his wish to try being a normal human boy. Turns out—normal human boys die when they get shot.

Hopefully Tana won't think this was her fault. She might have helped him set up his secret identity, but Kon was the one who took it and ran in front of a gun.

And if Kon hadn't been there to get in the way, it would have been Spoiler in the water, racing between drowning and bleeding out, or Cindy, or Lucas.

Maybe even Tim.

He heard Tim shouting from the deck as he fell, right before he blacked out. Who knows how he got loose from his guards, but Tim's right out in the middle of all that mess, and Kon can't do a thing about it now.

If Tim gets hurt, it's at least half Kon's fault. If he never came to Gotham—if Tim had another random partner for the art project—he might not even be on the ship at all. He might have figured out a scheme to get out of it and been at the mall with Dick right now, fighting over a bucket of popcorn at the movies.

Instead, he got Metro’s least competent Super, and all the danger he dragged to the party with him.

Hopefully Clark will get here soon and clean up the mess he's made before anyone more important gets hurt.

His vision is starting to go fuzzy at the edges again, the red swirls of blood turning into black and white like he's watching a VHS that's nearly worn out.

His Kryptonian hearing is working in dizzy little spurts, and he uses the last scraps of it to listen for the surface. At least if he can know Tim is alive—

Up above is a rough tangle of engines and yelling and crashing noises, so he can't find Tim, but he doesn't hear any shots. That's…good. Unless it's really, really not.

Not much Kon can do about it now.

Then there's splashing in the water and another voice, closer, distorted since they're talking half in the water. “I think I see something, Oracle—I’m going to dive, I'll loop my music back so you can find me.”

That doesn't mean anything Kon can sort out, so he's just decided to ignore it and get on with dying when he sees the shape swimming down towards him.

And just when did Robin get here? This isn't his territory.

No way this is real, Kon thinks, staring up as Robin swims down towards him. He's not wearing the cape, and in the rays of light cutting through the water his red-and-green suit gleams like scales, his ungelled soft hair floating in a cloud around the mask.

Then—

Even Robin can probably barely hear the music underwater, but to Kon it feels like it's swirling around them in the shimmering light.

'One step, one fall, one falter
East or West,
Over earth or by ocean—'

He gasps when it hits him, which is dumb both because the jolt makes the gunshot wounds burn again and also because that shower of air bubbles was kind of important to being alive and stuff.

Robin—not just Robin—takes a few more quick strokes down towards him, then reaches out.

The dancing rays of light and the music make it all feel unreal, like the strange dream last night when he was back in the lab. For a moment he can almost see overlay images: bright blue eyes with dark lashes, a loose flannel shirt, sneakers. 

The a warm and very real gloved hand clasps his wrist and drags him close.

'No day, no night, no moment
Can hold me back from trying—'

As they approach the surface, Kon feels the sunlight start to do its job. His senses are first, surging back into full strength, and the first thing he hears is Robin’s heart, safe and steady almost against his cheek.

How did he never hear it before? It's something about the suit—the heavy bulletproof layers and the way it braces Robin's ribs dampen the resonance a little, make it a little deeper. But it's not so much different that he couldn't have figured it out if he was thinking.

If he admitted it to himself as a possibility.

Expectations. It's all expectations.

He didn't expect his dangerous masked man to be—an adorable weird nerd who likes Enya.

Because how could he ever earn a jackpot like that, right?

Soon, as they rise further into the light, Kon's weight is no longer dragging at Robin's efforts to swim upward, and the burning in his lungs stops even before they clear the surface. He's still having a little trouble making himself move, but by the time Robin tows him over to a harbor buoy twenty meters away his limbs are responding enough that he can grab the edge.

Robin tosses the bag with the suit up first, then helps boost Kon up onto the buoy. He sits there dripping in his ruined people clothes as Robin clings to the rungs, panting and treading water.

“Please tell me you're okay? K—please?”

He's giving him an out, Kon realizes. He has to know, but he's giving him the opportunity to save his secret, the way Kon once told him to leave his mask on.

Kon grabs the edge of his sweater and pulls it up.

They both watch as the last traces of the jagged bullet holes vanish under the sunlight. Only the tears in his sweater and some streaks of water-diluted blood are left to tell what happened.

Robin lets out a long breath and leans his forehead on the edge of the platform. “Cripes, for a second I thought I'd figured it all wrong…”

The music is still going as Robin looks up and starts to pull himself out of the water.

'One day, one light, one moment
With a dream to believe in—'

He braces his arms on the edge of the buoy for a second, still half in the water, and shakes his head. Water droplets shower across both of them as Kon stares at the trails of water skimming along his arms and into the collar of the Robin suit.

The collar that he’s now noticing is considerably more open without the cape.

“Oh my god,” Kon gasps, still too stunned to say much else. “I’m in Baywatch.”

Robin bursts out laughing so hard that one glove slips on the edge and he almost slides back into the water. 

“Whoa, watch it!” Kon dives forward to grab his hand before he can slip, then pulls him up onto the platform.

Robin slides back and leans against the central pillar of the buoy. A few last spurts of laughter escape between deep breaths, and seeing his smile makes Kon wonder again how he never figured it out before. 

“That's the first thing you say?” Robin says finally, reaching up to swipe the water dripping down his mask. Even after the little show his hair is still soaking wet, so this doesn't help a whole lot.

“Right.” Kon grabs one of the struts of the buoy to pull himself up, then leans in, bracing himself over Robin's shoulder. He reaches out to smooth Robin’s hair back and stares at the tiny yellow earpiece, still faintly playing the last refrain of Book of Days. “Nice soundtrack, Tim.” He whispers, since nobody wants their secret identity getting yelled all over the coast, and hears Robin's heart stutter for an instant.

He isn't thinking about how close their faces are going to be until, well, they are. He waits a moment, wondering if Robin—Tim—is going to back away again.

“I…yeah,” Tim says, a little breathy. He doesn't move. “Enya’s cool.”

“Ship okay?”

“Mostly sorted, yeah. Batman and Nightwing are headed here to help with the reinforcements.”

“Cool.” Kon rests his forehead against the rim of Robin's mask. “For the love of heck can we make like the lady in Speed now.”

Robin takes a quick glance around at the network of struts, almost completely hiding them from anyone who happened to be looking at that random spot in the harbor. He shrugs. “Okay but to clarify I get to be Keanu, right.”

“Wouldn't have it any other way.”

Just as the music trails off and Kon leans in the last centimeter to bring their lips together, Robin puts a hand against Kon’s chest and pushes back. “Wait, time, time out.”

Kon scoots back instantly, trying not to feel crushed. “Wh—”

“Sorry. Not you—salt water—ow.” Then, while Kon is still processing what’s about to happen, Robin reaches up and peels the mask off.

Somehow even though Kon already knows it's still a shock when he actually sees the bright blue eyes and the soft splash of freckles appear under the green vinyl and the blank white lenses.

“Um. Hi.” Tim blinks water off his long dark lashes. His eyes flick nervously across Kon's face, his smile turning a little uncertain. “So, would you believe it, I didn’t actually pack the aquatic suit for the cruise so the mask doesn't seal and—ah forget it—”

Tim throws his arms around Kon's neck. Kon puts one hand around his waist as he presses close, sliding the other into his wet hair.

It’s not like it was when Tim kissed him in the museum. The intensity is there, but the tremors of panic are gone, and best of all, he knows this time it’s happening because it’s what they both want. Tim's lips are warm under the salt spray and Kon can feel his heartbeat against his own through the suit.

The kiss feels like it lasts forever, then Kon slowly pulls away, still cupping Tim’s face. “Just a second.” He nods towards the bag holding his suit. “Better get dressed for the party.”

Tim’s smile fades. “You’re sure you’ll be okay? We think that was the only Kryptonite, but…”

“I’ll be careful,” Kon says. “I promise. Won’t go near anything I can’t see through. Just a sec.”

By the time he speed-changes into the suit and puts Kelly’s wet clothes away, Tim is sitting on the edge of the buoy, trailing his feet in the water and staring into the ripples. His mask is back on and he’s resting his forehead on his laced fingers.

“So I haven’t been…handling things super well,” he offers, still not looking up.

Kon thinks about the museum again, everything Tim said, and a whole lot more falls into place. “Spoiler did say something about Edward Scissorhands.” 

“Yeah, not far off.”

Kon floats around so he’s laying just above the water and gently nudges Tim’s hands until he moves them away from his face.

“Listen, I realize my getting shot is definitely not going to help your obvious issues around people you care about being hurt but—I promise I’m not going to die on you until we can make sure everyone on the cruise is safe and take out that other ship. And then maybe we can actually talk about it this time. Instead of you, I don't know, running off to Japan or something.”

Tim blinks under the mask. “My backup plan was honestly Atlantis…”

Kon sighs and squeezes his hands, very carefully. Tim squeezes back. “I really do appreciate the honesty.”

“I wasn’t avoiding you on purpose,” Tim says as Kon moves to hover right next to him a few centimeters above the buoy, still holding one of his hands. “Or...I mean, it wasn't because I didn't want to be with you. It's just, every time you got in touch I just couldn’t stop thinking about…I mean, look what happened.”

“What happened is that I’m fine, Birdie.”

Tim half-smiles under the mask. “God, I missed that.”

Kon quickly leans in again to kiss the corner of his mouth. “So fill me in on what happened in the last ten minutes? I have the feeling I didn’t get the whole picture from where I was. I saw you get—get dragged off…I’m sorry, I should have done something.”

“It’s okay. I was trying to engineer a way to get out of the room anyway.” Tim keeps going before Kon can argue that having a gun to his head wasn’t, in fact, okay. “Spoiler, uh, the person who is also Spoiler slipped away while they were busy with me, and I knocked out the guys guarding me as soon as we reached the room they were going to put me in. We ran into each other in the halls after I got my suit so we went to let the crew out, and after that she went for the deck and I went for the ballroom. I thought you were up there with her…”

“I was?”

“I mean—you, you. So when I got on deck just in time to see Kelly get shot…” he trails off, but Kon can hear his heartbeat speeding up and his breathing stutter for a moment. “It’s—it’s lucky that you fell over the rail,” Tim continues. “There was a lot of Kryptonite, we probably wouldn’t have been able to clean it up in time for you to heal.”

Kon imagines the darkness rolling in on him and just—stopping, and tries not to shudder. “It’s not your fault,” he says. “And you saved me.” He pulls Tim’s hand up and kisses the back of his glove, like in one of those old movies Clark likes. “So thanks.”

“I…yeah, don’t mention it…”

“Ms. Fradon okay?”

Tim nods. “I told her to call the Coast Guard once the leader was down.”

“How did that go?”

“Well. Actually. Jimmy Olsen got him with a catering cart once everyone was distracted fighting me,” Tim replies. “It was also on fire. I don't know how he did that.”

“Oh my god and I missed it!?”

“I’m sure there are pictures.”

“Wait.” Kon suddenly remembers something important. “What are we supposed to tell everyone? They’re going to think I drowned.”

Tim winces for a moment but his heartbeat stays mostly even. “We'll say Robin rescued you when you fell overboard, because that's true and everyone saw me do it, and then we can just let them think I got you to a hospital. We'll figure the rest out after that.”

“Okay, and what about you?”

“I locked the door behind me after I knocked out the guys dragging me,” Tim says. “When I turn back up everyone will assume someone else let me out.”

“What about your dad? Are you sure he'll buy it?”

Tim blinks, his eyes flying wide for a moment, and takes a deep breath. “Yeah I figure that will be fine,” he says quickly, but not quickly enough.

Then the rest of it hits.

There are three of them. And they are all around the right age. And Tim, as Robin, always kind of hinted he lived with Batman. And Bruce did have that weird intense stare thing going on when he visited the house…

“No way,” he gasps.

“No—”

“No way—”

“Kon, wait—”

“My brother's girlfriend's loser ex!?”

Chapter Text

Once they're both suited up again, it's time to go back on super-duty.

After another quick kiss break, obviously.

Finally Robin—Tim, Kon’s never going to be over that—reaches up to reactivate his earpiece. Kon hadn’t seen him turn it off but thankfully at least one of them was still thinking. “I'm fine,” he says immediately over the sound of several people talking at once, and Kon hears sighs of relief. “What's the Kryptonite situation?”

The filters are on, though at this close range Kon can make out most of the conversation. “Clear,” someone says. “Nightwing is on the cruise ship, the Bat…larger vessel.” It sounds like a woman's voice running through some mechanical filters, maybe the one he'd heard in the Batmobile conversation before Robin busted his shoulder.

“That's why you had the cast!” he blurts out. Somehow it never occurred to him to ever x-ray Tim—maybe because he was always trying so hard to be normal around him, and in the process failing to notice all the ways Tim was being very not normal.

Tim holds up a finger, a posture that is so similar to Lois when she's focused on a phone interview that Kon struggles not to laugh. “Understood, we'll handle the civilians on the ship until it can dock.”

The next response is blurred by the filters. “... student who fell overboard?”

“Uh…yeah. He's fine, I hope. I dropped him off at a hospital on shore,” Tim adds in a very deliberate tone. “In a completely unrelated matter, Superboy just joined me and we'll be following up together since it's his territory.”

“I’ll check…make sure he is cared for,” the voice replies in an equally deliberate way.

“Cool sounds great, really worried about him you know…always terrible when a civilian gets hurt…”

Kon hears the signal from the other end cut out. “Time to go?” he asks, hovering in front of Robin as he stands. He moves to pick him up, then pauses, suddenly feeling awkward, because scooping up your kind of boyfriend who is also a superhero is one thing, but somehow it feels different when it's now also his very human art project partner.

So he kind of waves his hands vaguely for a few seconds wondering if the bridal carry is still in the cards, until Robin rolls his eyes under the mask. “Oh, cripes…think fast!”

And Kon doesn't necessarily think fast (still very distracted by Robin's abs and legs and, like, everything) but he does react fast when Robin jumps at him, and the next second he's thirty feet up with Robin in his arms and Robin's glove braced on his shoulder.

Robin who is also Tim. He has to remember that.

“I'm really glad you're okay,” Kon says.

Tim squeezes his shoulder. “Yeah, so am I.”

“You could have picked a slightly less dramatic way to not win this contest, though.”

Finally Tim really laughs, and it's not a sound Kon's ever heard coming from under Robin's mask before. For a second he just wants to swoop up through the low clouds and fly away with him, but unfortunately they're still on the Bat-clock. And by this point there are cameras on shore, so they'd have to face a whole Bat-lecture about playing Bat-hooky and leaving Nightwing to do all the Bat-work.

The cruise ship is starting a wide turn towards shore, the start of its circle taking it further out to sea as Kon loops in for his landing.

And maybe he does a little barrel roll while he's at it, just so he can hear Tim laugh again and feel the exhilarated rise in his heartbeat.

“We never got taken hostage by Kryptonite-stealing gunmen during a sculpture competition field trip cruise at my old school,” someone sighs from inside the ballroom as Kon lands on top of the wheelhouse.

All the contest entrants, staff, and teachers are still below with Nightwing, who Kon can hear circling the room asking people if they’re okay and helping with basic first aid. Jimmy is following Nightwing around, showering him with questions with no sign of losing steam as he's ignored. 

Several crew members are now out on deck and in the wheelhouse, checking on cables and anchors and other…boat type stuff, Kon’s no expert.

He can see where he went overboard: a smear of blood on the white railing, a reminder of how close things came.

Nearby, Spoiler is perched on top of a pile of tied up and mostly unconscious (or, by the heartbeats, wisely faking it) hijackers. She's looking out over the water with her chin on one hand, like one of the replica statues in Ms. Fradon’s art room, and absently bouncing her can of bear spray with the other.

Kon starts to call out to her—he has to let her know he's okay. Then he remembers Spoiler knows Kelly, not Superboy. Superboy can’t have any idea who she is, or what’s been happening since yesterday.

Robin slides out of his arms and jumps down to the deck, saving Kon from trying to figure out the secret identity math.

“Robin!” Spoiler yells, leaping off the pile of goons and running over. “Where’s Kelly? He's not—”

Kon resists the temptation to x-ray through her mask to see her face; the concern in her voice says plenty.

“He's fine—he’ll be fine,” Tim replies smoothly, outwardly at least, though Kon hears his heartbeat kick up a little as his eyes flick towards the blood on the railing. “We took him to a hospital on shore.”

“Oh, thank god, I was like, if somebody died on my watch Huntress is gonna kill me…We?” Spoiler finally looks past Robin as Kon floats down. “Oh. My. God?”

“Hi,” Kon says. It's hard keeping up his polite I-don’t-think-we’ve-been-introduced smile, but at least Spoiler is another hero so he doesn't have to be too distant. “Superboy, friend of Robin's, I heard him in the water and came to see if I could help.”

He holds out a hand and Steph grabs it with both of hers, her heart going so fast he's surprised Robin can't hear it. “Oh my god hi big fan not that I've ever been weird about it or anything, definitely, definitely never weird, hi, I'm the Spoiler and oh god I’m being weird right now huh—” She lets go of Kon’s hand and takes a step back, catching her breath. “Oh yeah! Robin! I watched your cape for you!” She bolts back to where she was sitting, grabs Robin's cape off a barrel, and runs back. “So Kelly's okay, that's great—crap, what about that other Gotham kid? The Wayne kid, did you guys find him yet?”

“One of the Waynes is on the ship?”

Damn, Kon has been in actual movies but he has nothing on Tim’s acting skills. He nails the perfect blend of professionally concerned, but not too concerned, not like he knows the guy obviously, but definitely a bit more jurisdictionally interested in the situation now that it involves a hometown celebrity.

Steph nods under her hood. “Yeah, I don't think they knew he was there but when some other kid yelled out who he was they said they were going to ransom him off. I don't know where they took him, if he's still on the ship or what, I was following the kids with the statue.”

Tim sweeps the cape back around his shoulders and Kon tries not to look disappointed as he latches the high armored neck plate. Spoiler doesn't notice, but by his tiny smirk and head tilt Robin definitely does.

“I don't think anyone made it into a boat,” Tim says. The Robin voice he uses with Spoiler is still professional, but a little lighter than he uses with civilians he doesn't know, maybe just a touch more…cheerful isn't exactly the word Kon would use, but a shade or two brighter. “So he must be around somewhere. We'll look for him, he can't be too hard for a super to find.”

“Sure, I can get right on that,” Kon says as Tim gives him a look, and hopes that was the kind of backup Robin was hoping for.

“Okay, great, not that I'm buddy-buddy with the Waynes or anything but, you know, hometown boy and all that.” Spoiler’s nod is much less convincing than Robin’s reply.

“Completely understand,” Tim says smoothly.

Kon knows how hard it is to actually open up to someone, after being so focused on keeping up an act for so long. And, being honest, that was without anyone actually expecting him to be good at anything at the same time. And Kon pretty much only had the one act to keep up, since he didn't even have his own name under the branding.

Meanwhile Robin is, well, Robin, and he works for Batman, and his older brother is Nightwing and his dad is Bruce Wayne.

Regular smorgasbord of expectations.

Whatever the heck a smorgasbord is.

“The Coast Guard should arrive shortly,” Tim continues. “You should stay on guard up on deck until they get here, but after that you might want to leave. They'll probably start asking questions about who you work for, since you haven't been on the news before.”

Steph sighs dramatically. “Yes, mom, geez.”

“But, um.” Robin shrugs, his posture drifting further towards Tim for a moment. “Good work.”

“High five?” Steph says hopefully, holding up both hands.

Tim hesitates for a moment, glancing quickly around at the number of people who are now on deck. Then he shrugs. “Sure, why not.”

‘Finding’ Tim Drake (sometimes Wayne) is much less complicated than Kon expected. Or rather, it's very complicated, but the Bats clearly have juggling this kind of Scooby Doo routine down to a science, so it seems as easy as falling off a log.

Not that Kon has fallen off many logs, but apparently this is a thing people say. Unless someone coded it into his language learning test tube tapes as a joke, which wouldn't completely shock him. He is also very suspicious about the one about moss and the Rolling Stones.

After a half minute of whispering back and forth with Nightwing over his radio to settle the plan, Tim sends Kon to sneak his clothes from their cabin to the storage room where he was locked up. “And also put the guy I left in there somewhere else, wherever seems good,” he adds. “Hopefully nobody will be looking too hard at my shirt, I was in a hurry and it's not designed for quick changes.”

Two buttons and one of the cufflinks are missing when Kon picks the black silk shirt up from the floor—now very sorry he missed the show. The buttons are a lost cause, but he finds the missing cufflink on the floor of the hallway on his way back to the storage room. He opens the door with the key Tim swiped, leaves the clothes folded neatly in a corner where they won't be spotted as soon as the door is opened, and hauls the now semi conscious goon into the kitchen for the cops to find.

While he's doing that, he can hear Robin making his grand entrance into the ballroom, much more obvious than Robin ever is normally. He and Nightwing loudly catch each other up on the situation, including Tim Drake being still missing, then Robin announces he's going to leave to rendezvous with Batman. And judging by Jimmy's “Wait…where did he go?” he pulls a Bat-vanishing act in the middle of a crowded room a few seconds later.

Kon takes another quick check to make sure nobody else will reach the storage room before Robin, then sets the key on top of the clothes, shuts the door, and heads off for his own meeting with Nightwing.

By the time the Coast Guard medics and Metro waterfront police board the ship, Kon is able to lead them and Nightwing to the room where he has conveniently ‘found’ the missing boy with his x-ray vision.

Kon starts to reach for his glasses before remembering he's suited up and Kelly's glasses got lost in the harbor somewhere. “Shall I get the door?”

Nightwing is already moving before he even finishes the sentence. “Oh no, let me—”

Since he's trying to make this look convincing, Kon still has his x-ray going when Nightwing moves in front of him to kick the door down. Just before he lets it go and steps out of the way, Kon gets a clear glimpse of metal pins and mesh stabilizing his spine.

That must be from whatever happened at New Year's—Kon’s sure he would have noticed if it was there before he came to Gotham. 

So it's definitely not for nothing Tim was stressing about the people he cares about.

The door cracks around the lock and swings open. “Tim Drake? Are you in here?”

“Nightwing? Over here.”

Tim is sitting in the far corner of the little storage room, half hidden by a heap of crates until he gets up. He looks convincingly wide-eyed and disheveled, and for a moment Kon remembers the museum, but even though Tim's breathing hard his heartbeat remains completely steady in Kon's ears.

Heck, the damsel-in-distress act is way cute. If there weren't so many damn witnesses around Kon would be all over him again by now.

Nightwing must have been thinking about the last time he turned up to save Tim Drake, too. “Oh man, weren't you the kid I found in the museum?” he says as he leads Tim out of the room. “You have been having a rough couple of months, little buddy.”

Tim gives Dick a quick don't push it glare as one of the medics wraps a shock blanket around his shoulders, but he doesn't shrug off the hand Dick rests on his back as they climb the stairs.

“Just don't call my dad,” Tim says as they get out on deck. “I'm sure he'll overreact—ah.”

“Yeah, I guess we're a little late on that one,” Nightwing says, sounding slightly smug. Probably this is because, as far as Kon could recall, Bruce Wayne rolling up in a Wayne Enterprises helicopter was not part of the plan they all agreed on.

And how did he even change out of the Batsuit so fast? Kon could swear that he was on the big ship the last time he scanned his hearing in that direction, and that was no more than five minutes ago. But now it's swarming with Gotham harbor patrol squads, and not a scrap of cape to be seen or heard.

Explaining Bats is a lost cause, Kon decides.

“No photos!” Steph yells—oh, the irony—and bumps Jimmy's arm as Nightwing helps Tim into the helicopter.

“Careful,” Bruce says. “He broke his arm just last month.”

“He what? Mr. Wayne, you should have him on a leash—”

“Oh, very funny,” Tim grumbles.

Kon hangs back as the helicopter starts to rise: Superboy doesn’t know Tim Drake, after all. This could be a good excuse to get introduced, but seeing the look on Bruce Wayne’s face—Batman’s face, god, he’s going to take years to recover from the shock—he can’t bring himself to intrude on his moment with Tim.

Tim, who Batman told him to keep an eye on. What a wild success that was. Even if Bruce didn't know who he was talking to at the time, all Kon did was watch Tim almost get shot, nearly drown himself, and only survive because Tim was the one who rescued him.

But just before the helicopter door shuts, Tim gives him a tiny wave, and Bruce looks his way with an expression that isn't entirely forbidding, so with luck this isn't about to turn into a Gotham-Metro ROMEO+JULIET situation.

(He only watched it because Kara brought the VHS over. The first time, anyway. The next twelve he has no excuse for.)

“Places to be?” Kon asks Nightwing once the helicopter is away.

“Not yet, somebody has to answer questions from the cops and I got here before you did.”

“...right. First.”

Then Kon hears another motorboat approaching. A second later, he recognizes the heartbeats and realizes he has a whole new set of problems.

“Lois!” Jimmy yells. “Clark! You missed the action but I got pictures!”

God, there was so much happening he almost forgot he'd called them.

“Sorry we're late,” Clark yells back. “Our—flight got delayed.”

For a second, Kon debates just bolting. Clark would have to find a way to sneak off and change first, so Kon would have a head start. But what is he going to do, run away forever? And give up Martha Kent's potato salad? Not to mention all the game cartridges Lois borrowed?

Maybe they don't actually know what happened and he can convince them everything is fine and he just coincidentally got back from Europe, where he definitely totally provably was this whole time, just in time to save a boat full of high school students.

He swoops around and hovers just under the railing. “Hi Lois, need a hand up?”

“Thanks, Superboy.” She braces a hand on Clark's shoulder as she stands up to reach for Kon's hand. “We saw you on TV.” There's a weight on ‘you’ that says a lot.

So, there goes bluffing. “Um.” Kon's grip almost slips—he quickly brings his other hand around to support her arm as he swings her up to sit on the rail. “I can explain. I swear.”

Lois rests her free hand on his for a moment, staring at him intently. Kon stares back, trying to gauge how mad she is, but instead it's a warm kind of look, kind of like how she was watching him during his first real Christmas party at the Kents’.

Very weird.

Slightly terrifying, honestly.

Lex used to play all caring and nice, sometimes, and that was when Kon knew things were about to go really, really bad.

And of course this is Lois, not Lex.

But.

“I'm glad you're okay,” Lois says quietly, giving his hand another little pat. Then she adds a little louder, and in her Intrepid Reporter voice so Kon knows there's no way out of this one, “but I've got to get the whole story! You have to tell me what happened.”

“I. Yeah. Sure. I can do that—”

Kon takes a quick look around for help, but by this point Nightwing and Spoiler are off somewhere talking to the Coast Guard, and of course Spoiler has no idea he might need help and Nightwing's main job is covering for Tim, not playing interference between Supers. So, like, he gets it, but.

But Lois is starting to look at him weird now so he really needs to come up with whatever it is she wants him to say, really fast, and he has no idea what that is. “Lois—” Maybe he should be going professional right now. “Ms. Lane—”

“Maybe we could get your interview after Superboy gets some lunch,” Clark suggests quietly, and Kon must be spiraling a bit because he didn’t notice Clark coming up behind him at all. 

Clark puts a big hand on his shoulder—very slowly, like he thinks Kon is going to jump away from him—and Kon is finally able to ground himself a bit. 

The tension oozes out of Kon slowly as he takes a couple deep breaths. He isn’t facing down Lex. This is Clark and Lois, and they might be upset, but they’re not going to hurt him over it.

And Tim is fine, and Robin is fine, and both of them are the same person and he’s never loved anyone more in his life.

So even if he's about to face the world's most awkward super-conversation, things are going to be okay.

“Yeah,” Kon says. “Oh my god lunch sounds really good right now.”

Chapter Text

He was right about it being the world’s most awkward conversation.

Especially since it’s preceded by the world’s most awkward taxi ride back to Lois’ apartment, where they all make immensely casual conversation about the trip to Europe Superboy was totally for real just on his way back from when he saw the hijacking.

But at least they buy him a mountain of cheeseburgers to fortify himself first.

“Don't be mad at Tana,” Kon says, once he’s finished explaining where he was the last couple months, and what he was getting up to in Gotham (besides making out with fear-gassed Robins, which he decides isn’t only his call to tell anyone about). “It was all my idea.”

Lois gives him…oh yeah, there’s the Concerned Aunt look. She’s sitting on one of the kitchenette bar stools, maybe to make it seem less like they’ve cornered him since Kon is sitting on the far end of the couch in the living room and Clark is sitting in the armchair between him and the door. This way there's at least more open space, and while he isn't really thinking about making a break for it he appreciates having the option.

“So how do you explain  Tana telling me not to get mad at you since it was all her idea?”

While Kon was eating, Tana called the apartment—apparently word got around the Metro journalist community pretty fast about the cruise hijacking, and she must have either guessed Kon was in the thick of it or someone emailed her photos of the final shooting on deck. She correctly guessed where Superboy would have ended up, and went straight to the source instead of risking Kelly's cover by calling around Metro hospitals or the cops.

From the sound of it she was about ready to sprint right onto a plane, but Lois convinced her (barely) to stay in Europe long enough to wind down the tour and cancel Superboy's remaining appointments so that his sudden arrival in Metropolis at the same time as the cruise ship will look less suspicious.

Which is all very understandable, but it would have been nice to have someone else in his corner just now.

“Asking her to say that was also my idea?” Kon tries. From the look on Lois’ face it is not a successful try. “Look, I'm sorry for going behind your backs. I just—I needed my own thing—”

“I get it,” Clark says.

“—and I know you aren’t going to agree with me but…wait hold up you…do?” Kon blinks, confused.

He was expecting more…

Well. Most of his experience with getting in trouble was with Lex, so his mind went on an irrational tour through his worst nightmares as soon as he sat down on the couch. But instead of the whole I-put-you-in-this-world-I-can-take-you-out routine they're being awfully chill about it.

For now.

“I went to an out-of-state college for a reason,” Clark says. “I didn’t want to be cooped up in a small town any more, and my parents were so concerned about people noticing anything strange about me that sometimes it felt like they wouldn’t let me do anything fun. If I got into Met U, I thought I might at least be able to join the badminton club without it turning into a big conversation with pro-and-con lists all over the dinner table.”

“You play badminton?” Kon says around a mouthful of fries.

“Play? Yes. Play well…” Clark wiggles a hand. “But I enjoyed it. It’s…nice to be bad at things, sometimes.”

Kon thinks about working on his English homework with Steph, and Clarissa giggling as they floundered through a Spanish conversation script. “Yeah, I think I see what you mean.”

“And I did spring the acceptance letter on them without telling them I’d applied. So I understand how you felt you had to do it that way.”

“You’ve had a lot of things to adjust to,” Lois adds. “And you’re a teenager, which all the handbooks tell me means you’re going to want to test your boundaries.”

“Soooo you’re not mad?” Kon says hopefully.

“I…” Clark sighs. “How do I say this.” He takes another slow breath and clasps his hands in front of his face. “I'm furious that you got hurt.”

Kon winces. “Oh.”

Lex always did hate it when he did anything to fall short of—

“And…I'm proud that you were doing so much to protect everyone else. And I'm angry at myself for not checking in more. But I'm not mad at you—I'm guessing that wouldn't help, in terms of keeping you from doing dangerous things. I just wish you’d felt like you could talk to us.”

Kon kicks at a loose thread in the carpet so be doesn't have to look up at the concerned expression he can hear in Clark’s voice. “Yeah, but you would have just said I shouldn’t do it.”

“Kid has a point, Smallville, I definitely would have said that and I would have been correct.”

“I know, I probably would have said it too…it’s just, Kon, I was able to manage at Met U because I’d lived as a human for almost nineteen years at that point. I even started kindergarten a year late because my parents weren’t sure I’d understand that I had to be careful with my powers. You’ve been living with people for a few years now, but—well, your main example of how to behave like a human was Lex.”

Kon winces and slides down in his chair. “Clark!” Lois says sharply.

“I’m not saying I think you’d be like him! Gosh, I’m so bad at this.” Clark drags his hands down his face before meeting Kon’s eyes again. “I shouldn’t have said that. I just mean—you didn’t have a lot to go on, or a lot of practice, and for your first try you picked a situation where things could have gone really wrong. And…well, I know Tana just wanted to help, but she didn’t have some of the information that might have been helpful, getting you set up.”

It’s not like he doesn’t have a point. There were so many people he could have hurt by mistake on his first day of school alone. “I just needed to know,” Kon sighs. “I just—I had to. I felt like I was going to lose it. So, sure, ground me or whatever, I know I messed up.”

“We’re not going to ground you,” Lois says. “It’s hard to do to an independent business owner. And besides, you might want to visit your new friends in Gotham once in a while.”

Kon looks up at her cautiously, not sure he heard right. “I…don’t have to get rid of Kelly?”

“If he just disappears at this point, after what happened, people will start asking questions anyway,” Clark says. “I wish we’d realized sooner that not having an outlet from being Super all the time was bothering you so much.”

“Especially with all the press around Lex in Metropolis,” Lois says.

“Right,” says Clark, “I spend so much time out in space—I kind of forget how constant it is.”

“But please, let’s work out a real plan and a schedule this time,” Lois adds. “And he’s going to have to be in the hospital for at least a month going by where the…the bullets…god.” She breaks off, her eyes suddenly going wide. “God, when I saw the news footage of the ship and realized it was you getting shot…”

Kon suddenly realizes she’s clutching her sweater, twisting the knit fabric into a tense bunch where he’d been shot just a few hours earlier. Clark doesn’t even say anything, just stares sort of distantly into the corner where Lois has a few group photos sitting on a little table.

Kon can see how losing your whole damn planet could make you a little overprotective. And how, if you were stuck in the past, unable to intervene when you got a random call for help, and returned to find out you might have been too late, you might freak out, you know, a little bit. Honestly, Clark is being a model of reasonable guardianship right now. 

Suddenly he feels a lot less annoyed at how worried about him they are all the time.

With Lex, he got so used to seeing the invisible cage that he still has trouble understanding that sometimes people want Kon to be safe just because he’s him, and not because they want something from him.

And even if they’re frustrating as heck sometimes, he’s glad he has them.

“I…I’m sorry I scared you,” he says. “Really. I didn’t want it to end up like that. I just wanted to show you I could handle it. That I deserve to have a life—”

Maybe it comes from being a super-powerful Midwestern alien with elderly parents, but Clark has never been a hugs person in Kon’s experience. So when Clark suddenly grabs him up into a tight warm hug Kon freezes in surprise. Lois dives to close the kitchen window curtains as they float a few inches off the couch.

Clark ruffles his hair. “Of course you deserve a life, Kon. You deserve the world.”

Kon swallows hard, and not just because Clark's holding him tight enough it's a little hard to breathe. “I—thanks—”

Lois climbs on the coffee table so she can reach high enough to put an arm around him and Clark. “I don't know what we'd do without you, kiddo. And you're not too bad either,” she adds to Clark, and Kon doesn't even roll his eyes when they kiss.

“I'll try not to scare you like that again,” Kon says once they settle back on the ground. He can't promise not to get hurt—nobody in the cape business can, and Clark knows that more than anyone.

“As long as you try,” Clark agrees.

“We can see about getting you the world later, but what would you say to a pizza to start with?” Lois suggests.

Kon floats over to sit on the kitchen counter as she picks up the phone. “Sounds great.”

By the time the pizza is gone, the sun is starting to set outside, a few last rays lighting up the bronze globe on top of the Daily Planet.

Clark makes popcorn on the stove (‘because if I don't do it right Pa would kill me,’ he declares when Lois rationally points out that the microwave bags are faster) and Kon scans through channels until he lands on a Met U basketball game.

“God, it's good to be home,” Lois sighs once they're all on the couch. “1723 is very pretty but next time we go to a decade without coffee machines I'm at least filling up a thermos first.”

“They did have coffee in 1723,” Clark points out. “Just not right where we were.”

“Maybe after work tomorrow we could go to Italy for some espresso…”

As he takes another bite of popcorn, Kon lets his hearing stretch out, their conversation and the noise of the game blurring into the familiar sounds of the city—the clatter of the subway, kids yelling as they kick a soccer ball around in the park, cars honking, the heartbeat in Galactic Talent’s back office—

Kon freezes for a second. Then he realizes he knows the soft steady sound.

“Hey, uh…I'm going to drop by the office and make sure everything's still in one piece there, okay?”

Lois raises her head off Clark's arm. “Are you sure?” she asks. “I still have the guest room set up—”

“Oh no, that's fine, enjoy the rest of the game,” Kon says quickly, because even if he didn't have his own visitor waiting things here are starting to look a bit…third wheel-y. He floats off the couch and backflips towards the window. “Gotta get a head start on cleaning the fridge and, like, stuff.”

From the look he gets it's pretty clear that both of them know that's not the actual reason, but neither of them call him on it. “Yell if you need anything,” Clark says.

“Will do!” Kon pauses in the open window long enough to give him a thumbs-up, then pushes off to soar across town, towards Galactic Talent.

All the window blinds are closed when he arrives, but when he x-rays through the wall he sees…okay, not exactly what he expected, since he assumed he'd be in disguise again.

Robin—Tim, cape and all, is asleep at the desk.

Kon floats in the tiny alley between Galactic and the next building and just watches for a few breaths. He knows how alert Robin’s instincts are—he’ll wake up the second Kon touches the window. And Kon can guess he already surveilled the area pretty thoroughly when he arrived, or he wouldn’t be so apparently peacefully sleeping in the middle of the room.

Tim’s leaning across the desk with his head resting on his gloves, his mask and the curve of his cheek lit up by the flickering light of the desktop computer.

Kon finally gives up staring through the curtains and slides the window open. 

Tim doesn’t move as he floats into the room, even when he hovers behind the chair, bracing his hands on the desk framing Tim’s shoulders. But his heartbeat keeps rising the whole time, and even in the dim light Kon thinks he can see a faint flush come into his face.

“I know you’re awake, Birdie.”

Robin doesn’t snap completely alert this time; he raises his head drowsily and Kon takes the chance to place a quick kiss at the edge of his mask. 

“Hey,” Tim says—in Robin’s voice, but not the distant professional one he used when he thought he was dealing with a civilian stranger. “Long day. Thought you’d want to talk. Tried to catch up on agency emails while I waited…”

“Believe me, I am dying to talk. Er. I would love to talk,” Kon says quickly. He twists away to sit on the edge of the desk as Tim straightens up and stretches. “But, um…maybe with a change of scenery, you know, so…” Tim rests his cheek on his hand and stares up at him, the edges of the white lenses soft, and Kon almost loses track of the plan he threw together in the few seconds it took to fly from Lois’ apartment to his office. “So I was wondering if you’ve ever seen the Alps?”

“Yeah, a few times,” Tim says—because his dad is Bruce Wayne, of course rich socialites go to the Alps every summer, how dumb can you get— “But, I mean, not recently, so…if I could borrow a jacket?” 

Tim’s Robin voice goes a tiny bit breathy at the end, and Kon almost breaks the desk but manages to haul his strength back before he ruins the mood. “I. Yeah, I can do that.”

“Man, I still cannot believe the glasses routine actually worked,” Kon laughs as they burst through one of the huge clusters of clouds over the Atlantic. They’re flying against the clock, so now that they’re nearing Europe it’s back to full daylight, with the clouds lit up in bright sunny gold. “I thought for sure everyone was going to see through me on the first day of school.”

“I did figure it out,” Tim points out, but the annoyance in his voice is playful.

Kon holds Tim a little tighter, just to enjoy the feel of him wearing Kon’s jacket. He'd said it was just because he didn't have his cold-weather cape, but even the mask couldn't do anything to conceal the eagerness in his expression when Kon slid his jacket off and handed it over. (Sure, he had spares, but was he going to pass up a chance like that? No way.) 

“Really? And just when was that?”

“Oh, cripes, ages ago, totally...” Tim's heartbeat doesn’t agree, but Kon decides not to push him about it. Especially because then Tim puts a hand against his chest, and moves his other hand from around his neck to dig into his hair, and after that they have to find another cloud to hide out in for a bit in case a passing plane gets an eyeful.

Once they reach the Alps, Kon drops Tim and a backpack full of hangout supplies off at the secluded spot Kara introduced him to while trying to distract him from the trial. The hidden plateau on the Swiss border is basically inaccessible if you can't already fly, with a few shallow caves that are perfect for a picnic. 

“Wait right here,” Kon says, still hovering as he holds Tim's green-gloved hands. “I will be right back.”

“Sure, like I have other options.” Tim laughs behind him as Kon flies off, and even in the cold wind over the mountains his unhesitating if slightly sarcastic trust fills Kon with warmth.

When he zips back ten minutes later, arms full of his haul from an Austrian supermarket, Tim has the picnic blanket spread out in one of the caves and is crouched next to the backpack, going through Kon’s tapes. “All the modern necessities, huh?”

Kon tosses him the bag of bread. “And I grabbed extra batteries in Linz in case the boombox runs out.”

“Nice.” Tim takes out a still-warm roll and holds it against his face, which Kon definitely isn't jealous about.

“Plus some uh…” Kon takes one of the soda bottles out of another bag. “They don't have Jolt, so I found this stuff called Mezzo Mix, it's German, sounded awful, thought you might like it.”

Tim grabs the bottle Kon tosses him. “Orange and cola…Oh my god, wait is this like Schwip Schwap, I love Schwip Schwap.”

“That cannot be a real brand, you are just saying sounds.”

“Cross my heart,” Tim says. “Tried to see if we could get distribution rights for the states but no dice.”

“What a shock, now let's get some tunes going.”

Kon really does want to talk, but he discovers he wants to sit next to Robin and watch the clouds just as much, so for a while they just let the Backstreet Boys play as they attack the pretzels.

“Wish I brought my camera,” Tim says around a bite of cheese. “View’s great up here.”

“Next time?” Kon says hopefully.

Tim smiles at him, a little tired, but it's still one of the most beautiful things Kon's ever seen. “Next time, yeah.”

This seems to be as good a chance as any to actually start the serious conversation he's been dodging for the last ten minutes. “So…like, what are we?”

“Um. My fire? My one desire?”

Kon blinks at him, frozen.

“And ohhhhhh my god, crap, I have just found out I cannot make the lyrics thing sound cool the way you do…” Tim hides his face with his gloves and ducks into the collar of Kon's jacket. “Can I get a do-over?” he mumbles. Then his shoulders start shaking, and after a few seconds Kon can't help laughing too.

Then Tim tosses a handful of snow at him, Kon tackles him off the picnic blanket, and they roll around on the snowy plateau until Kon ends up on his back with Tim straddling him. Kon smiles up at him, staring at the sunlight lighting up his hair and the soft clouds of breath floating around his face.

Tim leans in and laces his gloved fingers into Kon's. “I want you to be my boyfriend, Superboy. I always wanted that, I think we both know it, but—I don't know, I guess I was scared to actually say it. Relationships are pretty risky in our business.”

Kon remembers the dream, and wonders how much of that was actually his imagination after all.

Tim climbs off and moves away to sit on the edge of the plateau, staring out over the mountains. When Kon sits down next to him Tim links an arm through his and rests his head on his shoulder.

“Ready to talk about it?” Kon asks.

Tim nods, but still doesn't say anything, so Kon figures he'll have to be the one to get the party started.

“Something happened to Batgirl, right? The kids at school were talking about it before the museum, and you seemed kind of freaked—” Suddenly a lot of pieces fall into place. “God, it was me you were talking to, wasn't it? After you got gassed? And then we…well, lucky that one worked out, huh.”

“Yeah, sorry about…that. I was trying to figure out how to explain it to. Well. You.”

“Same here.”

“And—you’re right, Batgirl was…part of it. You promise this won't go any further?”

Kon puts his free hand over his heart. “Test tube scout's honor.”

“Something happened just a few weeks after the Luthor conviction party,” Tim says. “Things are better now, but I can't tell you more than that. But…it didn't happen to Batgirl, you understand?”

“It didn't…oh.”

“So we couldn't acknowledge it, even with the other capes.”

“Geez, so every time you were hanging out you had to pretend everything was fine—God, I'm sorry—”

“No, it's not like that,” Tim interrupts. “I really appreciated it. Back in Gotham we were just kind of staring at each other morbidly and listening to way too much PJ Harvey.”

“Oh now that's a recipe for handling things normally.”

“I was listening to way too much Nirvana, to be clear,” Tim adds quickly, because of course he would want to make a point of that even at a time like this. “But things were starting to look up a bit, before New Year's.”

“Everybody keeps bringing that up. You never showed up for your date with me, and Spoiler said you wouldn't talk about it afterwards...”

“Batman's back always starts acting up when it first snows,” Tim starts off, slowly. “That's…another thing we have to cover up, so Nightwing was in the suit for a few days. I went with him. But a lot more people have vendettas against Batman than against Nightwing, and I wasn’t thinking about the suit he was in…” He trails off for a few moments, looking out over the mountains as his heartbeat climbs. “It broke really bad,” he says finally, and since Robin isn't usually one to dodge away from the details, it must have been really freaking bad. “Nightwing almost got killed—I almost killed Nightwing—”

“Hold your horses,” Kon interrupts, “that doesn't sound right—”

“He wouldn't have gotten caught in the first place if he wasn't trying to cover for me getting out,” Tim protests. “I was supposed to back him up but instead he was about to let Two-Face hang him!”

Kon remembers how Robin and Batman kept acting around Nightwing during the fight he watched on tv, and the metal mesh, and can guess how close things came to breaking as bad as they possibly could. “...But he must have had a plan?” Kon tries to sound positive, even though knowing what he knows now about Bats…

“I…I think he wanted me to think he had a plan,” Tim says. “I think he did have a plan.” He pulls away from Kon and hugs himself in the dark leather jacket. He stares down the sheer edge of their hidden plateau as he speaks again. “I think the main part of his plan was that he didn’t want to have to go back to Batman and tell him another Robin died.”

“That doesn’t mean you should feel—another?”

“Oh. Uh.” Tim turns and looks at him. “How did you think I got the job?”

For an instant Kon feels entirely frozen, like he's watching Robin plummet from the top of a skyscraper all over again. “I am only just now considering that, like, at all.”

Tim shrugs like it's not worth mentioning in the bigger picture, which really explains a lot. And after all the times Tim tried to tell Superboy to stop thinking he was expendable…

“Let people worry about you once in a while,” Kon says. He traces his fingers through Tim's hair and along the curve of the mask. “You should hear what Nightwing's heart does whenever he thinks you're in danger.”

“But—”

“Birdie.” Kon cups Tim’s face in his hands, as gently as if he’s holding a handful of snowflakes, and turns it up towards the light. “I know you want to control how much danger the people you care about are in. But you can’t stop them from making choices. And sometimes they’re going to decide you’re the most important thing in the world.”

Tim takes a soft breath and Kon leans even closer.

“Like me,” Kon whispers against his lips. “I don't know what I'd do without you.”

“Then let's hope we never find out,” Tim whispers back, before closing the last tiny fraction of distance between them.

And even if the kiss tastes a little of orange cola, Kon still wants it to last forever.

Chapter Text

“Duck down for a second.”

Tana scans the sidewalk and parking lot as she takes the last turn into the parking lot of GCHS. Kon x-rays through the door and sees nothing more ominous than a dropped thermos with sharpie Harley Quinn symbols lying under a bush. “Well, there's no paparazzi, so all the signs point to your secret identity holding,” Tana concludes. She reaches over to pat Kon's shoulder as he sits back up. “Just next time let's not go to extremes, okay?”

“I didn't know the Kryptonite was there,” Kon sighs, but Tana still looks concerned. And a little guilty, even though none of the mess was her fault. Sure, she technically had the idea, but Kon is confident he would have thought of something monumentally stupid if Tana hadn't brought up her plan.

Like staying in Metro and talking to Lex. Who knows where that could have gone—especially since Lois’ investigation of the cruisejacking turned up some suspicious phone calls from the prison a few weeks before. Lex clearly hasn't given up on his schemes just because he's behind bars for the moment.

So really, Tana kept things from getting a lot worse, but she doesn't see it that way.

“You look nice,” Kon says once the car is parked. “Very Connie.”

“Yeah I couldn't stand showing my face like that again.” Tana makes a very un-mom disgusted face into the backseat mirror as she adjusts the new wig.

Kon joins her in staring in the backseat mirror and tugs at his bangs. He hasn’t straightened his hair in a while and he missed a couple spots, but he shouldn’t be in the building long enough for anyone to notice except Tim.

 “Okay, I'll go sign the opposite of everything I did last time while you go find your friends.” Tana sighs. “Too bad we didn't make it to PTA night, I did fantasize about bringing kimchi…”

“You know how to—”

“I know how to bribe my sister.”

“Ah.”

Once he has a hall pass, Kon abandons Tana to deal with any other awkward questions from the school secretary and jogs to the cafeteria. The bell just rang for lunch, so nobody notices another kid wandering around, even one who was in the news last month.

It’s sort of weird being in normal surroundings again after going back to super-business-as-usual. None of the other students look at him like he doesn’t belong—none of them notice him much at all—but he feels like there’s a bit of new distance.

Sure, he fits in with them, but he’s not one of them, not quite.

Not that he didn't know that before, so he's not exactly sure how it's different, just that it is.

It's not that big a deal, he tries to tell himself. It's just a bunch of normal human teenagers. And your boyfriend. But he still hesitates in the hall in front of the open cafeteria door.

Gotham is messing with his senses again, because he doesn't notice the footsteps behind him until they're almost on top of him.

“Kelly! You're alive!”

In the space of a half-second, Kon starts to duck, then recognizes the voice and relaxes as Hudson grabs him around the shoulders in a one-arm squeeze. “Hey,” he says. “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated, uh…were there any?”

“We were all pretty freaked out, man.” As they enter the cafeteria, Kon starts to turn to the left, but Hudson steers him the other way. “Over here, we had to move to a bigger table. Yeah, you really scared us. Some of us were going to visit you in the hospital but Tim didn't know where they took you since his dad flew him straight back here…hey Tim! Look who's back!”

Tim and Kon's eyes meet as he looks up from his tray, and Kon can hear his heart skip a beat, although it's unclear if that's because he's genuinely surprised or because he just choked on a bite of what GCHS is trying to pass off as bolognaise. “Oh my gosh,” he says, wide-eyed and cute and definitely doing it on purpose, “it's you again.”

Kon sits on the table next to Tim and puts his feet up on the bench. “Don't start the welcome parade just yet,” he says. “My stepdad put his foot down about living near so many supervillains so I'm transferring to a school near his army base. I'll still be around to visit Mom once in a while but we just came in for the paperwork…uh…” 

He looks around at the expanded group clustered around the benches. Clarissa looks up from wiping some tomato sauce off Jen’s velvet ruffles and waves. Hudson is sitting between two other girls Kon vaguely recognizes as cheerleaders, all three reading the same advanced math textbook.

Kon leans down to stage whisper to Tim. “Anybody mind explaining what happened to the nerd table?”

“Jen found new recruits for Math Bowl,” Tim replies.

“No kidding.”

Clarissa looks up and gives Kon a surprisingly welcoming smile. “While we were working on our art project we started talking to Sandra and Callie and we realized we all thought Xander had promised to take us to prom if we helped him pass Algebra.”

Clarissa isn't wearing Xander’s letter jacket any more, and now that he thinks about it the purple velvet scrunchie in her low side ponytail looks a lot like one he's seen Jen wear.

“The coven has also expanded,” Jen adds darkly.

“We definitely have a winning team this year,” Ives says. “The trophy should be in the bag even if Tim gets run over by a snowmobile again.”

Tim sighs dramatically and shakes his head but there's a playful glint in his eyes when he looks at Kon.

“Wait,” Kon says. “Speaking of trophies.”

Everyone at the table goes quiet for a second. “Wait, did nobody tell you? Seriously?” Jen laughs.

“I've never been shot by supervillains before, I was kind of distracted,” Kon explains. Which is very true, just for different reasons than most of them think.

“Oh cripes.” Tim shoves his tray back and stares up at the ceiling. “I forgot.”

“Tim's dad locked him up for like a week,” Hudson says. “He hasn't been the same since. Being waited on hand and foot really changes a kid.”

Tim throws an apple slice at him.

“Will someone just tell me if we won, oh my god.”

“Well, we didn't.”

Somehow, this whole time Kon was pretty convinced he didn't care, and convinced he didn't actually expect to win, but hearing Tim say it still makes some little bubble of imagination burst. “Oh.”

“But also we didn't…lose?”

Kon raises his eyebrows behind the glasses. “You’re going to have to explain that one.”

Ives makes a shooing gesture from Tim's other side. “Just show him, I'll take your tray.”

Kon waves before jumping off the table to follow Tim. “See you guys around sometime,” he says, and hopes it won’t just be an excuse for his cover story. He’s come to really like spending time around them, and he knows just hanging out in the cafeteria like a normal human teenager is one of the things he’ll miss most.

(So maybe, in the end, some things were a little like Saved By the Bell.)

“Art room is—”

“I still remember where the art room is,” Kon points out.

Tim laughs a little. They've come to an unspoken agreement not to hold hands in the hall, but he brushes up against Kon's sleeve with this shoulder. “It feels like ages ago.”

“It was twenty-four days and I saw you at least three times.” Clark hasn’t said anything yet about Robin turning up to watch movies or play video games over at Galactic Talent, thank god. Still, Kon extremely reluctantly tries to get Robin out the window again by ten just in case there’s some kind of Bat-Curfew and he has to deal with Bruce Wayne raiding his pad.

Tim shrugs. “Not the same. Careful crossing the courtyard, they finally fixed the fountain and it's all kind of…soggy.”

“See in Metro we have this thing called pavement,” Kon sighs as he follows Tim through the sticky sludge.

“Dad’s working on it, but he's busy with some…business trips.”

Probably those business trips also have something to do with the business trips Clark has been taking for the Planet, and the phone calls Kon’s overheard about trying to connect Lex to the boat hijacking.

“And here we are.” Tim opens the door to the deserted art room and waves towards the shelf of trophies. “Feast your eyes.”

“On…the stand?”

“We don't have the trophy this week, sorry.”

Kon takes a step closer to read the text on the simple glass half-dome. “Wait, it says second place!”

“By the time the hijackers raided, the judges had only agreed on first place. And then a bunch of pieces on the shortlist for the other prizes got broken. So we're sharing it.”

“So who won?”

“North Gotham High got first place.”

Kon thinks back to exploring the ballroom with Steph and Tim. “Oh, yeah, that's probably fair.”

“Steph was asking me to tell you to check your AIM, by the way, I think she wants to brag.”

“Also fair.”

“But because of everything that happened on the boat, the Daily Planet gave special awards to our team and Cindy and Lucas from Metro. That's over here in the place of honor.”

Front and center on Ms. Fradon’s desk, between a mason jar of markers and a kitten-a-day calendar, is a small silver statue of Superman cradling a crystal globe etched with the words EARTH CITIZEN AWARD.

Kon stares at the circle of glittering light surrounding the statue. “This feels nepotistic,” he jokes, because the other option is getting way too emotional about it.

Tim wraps his arms around Kon and rests his chin on his shoulder. It's Robin's voice that whispers in his ear. “Trust me, Superboy. You've earned it.”