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If anyone could explain the counterintuitive nature of the mind, Kon would listen, carefully, then disregard every bit of it. It would eat at him but ultimately he would not learn from it, as is the story of his life. It frustrated him to no end, and it made changing the habits he'd grown into no easier.
He'd just about made out a Tim-shaped figure at the door as the sudden light filled out the room. As the light hit, so did Kon's headache. He groaned and covered his face with one of Tim's many pillows scattered about the bed.
Tim startled, slow and unusually jumpy in his movements. Would you look at that? Kon was starting to sound like the resident Bat himself. Maybe there was some merit to watching Tim work, aside from getting to stare at his scrunched up face.
A second later he heard the soft click of the light switch again. He heaved a sigh, but stayed underneath the pillow, part for the dramatic effect, part because it actually made him feel better in some messed up placebo way.
He could hear Tim shuffling around the room, taking his suit off, his boots, all the while trying his best to keep it as quiet as possible. It didn't work but Kon could appreciate the thought. As the sounds of hard kevlar and leather hit the floor in a heap, the musky smell of sweat filled the room.
“Why are you in my room?” Tim asked, voice muffled and too loud.
“Bart is running laps upstairs and playing on his DS. Loudly.” Each one of his steps was like thrown pebbles making ripples in the water, if pebbles were sharp and hateful and ripples made your head scream in agony.
“That doesn't explain why you're in my room.”
Why was he? Kon's room was lead isolated for this exact purpose, keeping him cocooned from the onslaught of noises that scraped his brain raw at times like this. Kon's room also held the generally helpful set of noise cancelling headphones Tim had gotten for him. None of that mattered when Kon didn't want to be in his room.
He shrugged, and said matter-of-factly, “I didn't want to start the next Halloween movie without you.”
Tim groaned; a loud, guttural sound that Kon followed with a stifled whine. Even though it must have been obvious at this point, he didn't want Tim too aware of his problem. Kon liked to pretend he wasn't as transparent as he knew he was. He didn't enjoy it, but it was a matter of necessity for his survival.
The springs of his bed creaked as Tim sat down, the warm skin of his thigh brushing against Kon's feet. Internally Kon cursed himself for his depravity that made him overly aware of the fact that his friend was half naked right now, next to him, as if they hadn't seen each other in similar states of undress before. Even then Tim had been particularly touchy about this sort of thing; nakedness, intimacy, and who was Kon to preach to him? He had even less of a normal relationship with both. That only made him appreciate the moments when Tim was too exhausted to care about propriety.
Too bad he had a pillow over his face. Peeking over it would only make him more obvious and desperate. The older they got, the less excuses they had for being sort-of-undressed in front of each other. They were no longer clingy kids who hung off of each other half the time they spent together—mostly they weren't, at least. Kon didn't feel much different from the gangly sixteen year old he used to be. Except now, he knew why his eyes would linger on Tim when he'd pull his shirt over his head and his back muscles moved and made Kon's brain go huh.
Not that he was looking for excuses to see his buddy naked. He only appreciated them when they showed up, then felt strongly shamed by them.
“I'm not staying the night,” Tim said, and sunk Kon's heart. He made a pitiful little noise. “Don't whine. I have stuff to take care of.”
“Yeah,” Kon grumbled, “me.”
He could imagine the pointed arch of Tim's eyebrow. Hell, he could hear it in his voice. “I thought you were fine.”
And he was. Mainly. The magic bullet only grazed him, and the whole situation was honestly more ridiculous than anything else, barely endangering. Who the fuck makes a magic gun? People need to get their gimmicks together.
Just a graze still landed him at medbay, and he bitched at Tim the entire time there. Tim gave back as good as he got, proud and unbothered, while Kon was very much bothered.
“I am,” he admitted. But two could play this game. Kon had watched Tim fight and flinch each time he stepped wrong or swung his staff too hard. He wasn't an idiot. “How are you doing?”
For a moment Tim fell silent, thrown off. “I'm… okay? What?”
“I saw you limping,” Kon said, feeling just a bit guilty for acting smug about noticing something like this. It was not the sort of remark Tim could take lightly. “Did you sprain something?”
He knew Tim didn't. He was offering him an out, sort of, because he knew an active injury would be easier to admit to than a constant not-so passive pain. Tim liked to think he was pretty sleek, too.
“No,” he denied, as Kon assumed he would. “You're deflecting.”
“I don't want you to leave.”
Tim was easy to disarm with staunch vulnerability, not because he didn't believe it was there, but because he didn't know how to throw it back in your face. He could bicker with the best of them but if Kon offered some honesty and outright asked what he wanted, Tim found it impossible to say no.
“Me being here won't help with your headache,” Tim said. “Actually, it will only make it worse.”
That was true. Well, mostly. The constant movements and sounds every functioning body made would only add to the sum of it all, but it would help because Kon wanted him here.
Gently, Tim added, “You also probably shouldn't be staring at screens if your head hurts.”
How damn hypocritical was it of Tim to be dolling out preachy advice about being careful with your pains when he himself was planning to go jumping rooftops? “Don't tell me what to do.”
The headaches had been Kon's company for as long as he could remember using his powers, not Tim's. That, and the occasional thought of knocking his skull open that he entertained from time to time, were sources of momentary comfort. Didn't do much else, but he felt lighter with the ability to turn the pain in on himself twice folded.
“Would it kill you to accept help?” Tim asked.
“I am accepting your help. In the form of you sitting your ass down and watching the rest of this movie with me.”
Tim's eyebrow twitched. “I thought you didn't want to start it without me.”
He didn't, but it had taken Tim so long to get here and Kon desperately needed some horror movie shaped comfort if he was already lacking the friend shaped kind.
He rolled over on his back and lifted his arms in Tim's direction, in some form of a mocking plea. “I'm only five minutes in. Our friend Michael hasn't even showed up. Come on, man.”
“I don't even like those movies.”
Kon lifted the pillow off his face and looked at Tim, at his pale, fallen face and his unfocused eyes. His hair was half tied up and half falling around his face in oily strands. Kon thought he really, really needed a shower and a nap. He said none of that, only looked at him and hoped that he made a sad, pathetic sight.
“You don't have to watch. Will you just stay with me?” he asked, pleading; more sincere than he'd like to admit. “I’d feel better knowing you’re near.”
A flash of shock ran across Tim's face before he steeled it back to some semblance of a careful neutrality. It might have worked on someone less Tim-experienced, but it did not work on Kon.
“Don't be dramatic,” Tim muttered.
“I'm not,” Kon insisted. He stretched out one of his legs and folded a grimace. “A bullet grazed my poor ankle, you know. Ouch. It hurts so bad and I'd feel so much better if my mean friend stayed here and watched a movie with me.”
He could see Tim's apprehension at being called mean, even if he had to know Kon was just pulling his leg. Guilt tripping him. Same thing.
Tried and true process; it worked like magic.
“I know you're fine,” Tim said as he settled more comfortably on his portion of the bed. Kon saw how slow he moved, for Tim. Careful movements, aware of the spots where it hurt and how not to aggravate them. “Your poor patient play is not fooling me.”
Kon gasped. “How cruel. How mean! You'd be so harsh with your friend when he's suffering an ailment so severe?”
“Stop it,” Tim said, grumbly, but with a smile.
The wound stung a bit still. If Kon were smart, or any less stubborn, he would have sat in the Sun for an hour or two to get himself in top shape again. It sounded almost too easy when he thought of it that way. The Sun though, in a funny turn of events, hurt his eyes whenever he got like this, and didn't need more direct stimulants to make his life hell.
A bit of a sting on the surface was such a ridiculous little thing that it felt unnecessary to mention, especially when he knew well enough that if Tim got a whiff of it he'd get all up in his head about lingering magic effects and so on and so on, and it would take the rest of the night to shut him up. Kon didn't want that for either of them. He didn't want to end up back in medbay and he didn't want Tim stressed over nothing.
He balanced Tim's laptop on the edge of the bed. It made his headache spike, and got him squinting, but the movie wasn't going to play itself. He never noticed how much he used TTK in his daily life until it hurt him to do so.
Tim swatted at his hip. “Give me that.”
He took the laptop and set it up on a chair, while Kon made himself comfortable further up on the bed, to make more space for Tim. Not that he didn't like Tim so pressed up against him while in nothing but boxers but—but. Propriety. Very important.
Finally, with both of them settled on the bed, Kon hit play. On the screen, a gaggle of kids gathered around a TV screen as a jolly ad for a collection of Halloween masks started playing. Next to Kon, Tim laughed.
“What?” Kon asked, with a distinct feeling that he was the one being laughed at. It got him wary on instinct, but then it was Tim laughing—hard to be worried about that.
Tim brought up a hand to his face to cover his grin. His eyes didn't move from the screen, which bathed him in gentle blue light as the characters moved.
“I thought we were skipping the third part?” he asked.
“We're watching all of them.” Kon noted the way he avoided an answer. “Means no skipping. What kind of a dirty cheat do you take me for?”
Tim sighed. “Well, this one is—”
The possibility of Tim outright spoiling a movie for him almost made the headache go away entirely for a full three seconds. “Nuh-uh! Shut up! I'm watching!”
He stuck his uninjured leg in Tim's side in protest. It jostled him and Kon saw a brief grimace fly over his face and just as he was about to apologize, Tim's hand wrapped around his calf and squeezed.
He could never hurt Kon with his bare strength but he could inflict pressure. It was very effective. It got him quiet, it got him paying attention to the movie so his mind wouldn't start running wild.
“It's kind of catchy,” Kon muttered, feeling altogether dumb, subdued and flustered. “The jingle.”
Tim hummed, ominously, and Kon cursed him for having seen the movie before and being all sly about it. It made him all smug and insufferable and Kon… rather liked how that looked on him.
It occupied most of his brain space as he tried to follow the plot of the movie, because Tim kept his hand firm on his leg throughout. If pressed, he would insist that it was the overstimulation that made him so overly aware of the touch, but Kon knew it wouldn't be true. He knew Tim had nice hands; bony and rough with scars and cracks. Knowing it made him restless, almost guilty, like it wasn't for him to know.
He shifted to the side and Tim pulled his hand back. It wasn't awkward and stilted at all. Nope. There would be no reason for it to be weird, because Tim knew and doubted nothing.
When it was apparent that the mandatory sex scene was about to happen, Kon became very glad for the lack of physical contact between them. Even the proximity felt too palpable, too charged between them; to Kon, that is. He had no doubt Tim was having a good ol’ regular time watching a movie, oblivious to the tension radiating from his right.
Still, Kon snuck a glance at Tim, just in time to catch a pent up grimace on his face. He laughed.
With no real push behind it, Tim swatted at him. “Shush.”
“How old are you again?” Kon asked.
“I just think it's unnecessary for the movie,” Tim said, looking as uncomfortable with words leaving his mouth as he could. “No one does that—no, shut up, don't say anything. I know they do. That's not the point.”
While Tim got lost in his own points, Kon debated the level of potential weirdness and merit of a joke, and decided that it was not actually weird or creepy if what he'd be doing was clearly just trying to get on Tim's nerves.
He opened his mouth and saw Tim's face fall. “Rob, if you were a divorced doctor, and I a young lady on a mission—”
“Do not finish that sentence.”
See? Jokes. Never awkward. It certainly closed the topic of sex, which Kon was thankful for.
Not long after, Kon was watching an insect emerge from what remained of that woman's face, suddenly wide eyed and awake and paying attention. The camera stayed on the shot for long enough that he figured they'd spent a good deal of money on making it look as grisly as possible.
“I miss him,” he said, somewhat regretfully. Next to him, dozing off, Tim hummed in question. “Michael.”
Tim huffed and stretched, and that was enough to steer Kon's attention away from the scary movie once more. He resisted the urge to pinch Tim's exposed side, thinking it would be too weird, considering the everything of tonight.
Tim pulled his leg up and rested his chin on his knee with a sigh. “You're not the only person who felt this way.”
So Tim went on to tell him about the reception of the movie, about producer's intentions for the franchise, and Kon mostly tuned it out in favor of watching him talk and pay rapt attention to the movie at the same time. He would stop occasionally to point out a detail Kon wasn't following, and was instead starting to question Tim's initial distaste towards the movie.
“Are you watching?” Tim asked at one point. “I thought I had to stay here with you so you could watch.”
That had been the main excuse, yes, and Kon felt hot with shame at being caught looking. He turned back to the movie, the dull ache against his skull prompting him to shut his eyes for just a moment.
“Should I turn it off?” Tim asked, no accusation in it. Again, Kon found himself resisting the obvious smart choice. Go to sleep. Wake up maybe-mostly headacheless. Continue his life. He could be smart, or he could put his legs up in Tim's lap and continue half watching the movie that was steadily creeping him out.
Tim snorted at his silent protest but didn't complain. He took two pillows from Kon and piled them up behind himself to lean against, not quite stifling the soft whine as he rolled his shoulders.
The plot was starting to unravel with sudden speed, so Kon didn't get an excuse of a slow scene to question Tim about it. It wouldn't be appreciated either way, so he comforted himself with the knowledge that it had to be better this way. Kon couldn't exactly call Tim out on this without being called a hypocrite, but he could force Tim into taking a break. This way they were both ignoring their problems very professionally while not overworking themselves. A win-win situation, as far as Kon was concerned.
***
A crackle of a doorknob stirred Kon awake. Mostly awake, at least; his vision still swam as he blinked his eyes open, then decided it wasn't worth it.
A whisper came from a bit further away, then neared him. Tim spoke to him in a hushed tone. “Sorry. I was just leaving, I didn't mean to wake you.”
“Leaving?”
He could feel Tim hovering, but Kon was too sluggish in both his movements and thoughts to focus on any of it. A bit louder, with an underlying roughness to his voice that Kon associated with exhausting fights and mornings after, Tim said, “Movie's over.”
Right, the movie. Kon must have passed out right after it ended. He dimly remembered seeing the credits roll, in that dreamy, unfocused state of drifting away.
“You can stay,” Kon slurred. “It's your room.”
A clammy hand rested against his cheek, then the side of his forehead. Checking for fever, Kon thought. It was one of those habits people had and found hard to break, even though he himself couldn't get a traditional human fever.
“I don't have magic fever,” he said, because he knew that to be the sort of worry Tim would have. “My leg is fine, my blood is fine, where are you going?”
Kon rolled to his side, looking up at Tim all bleary eyed. He painted a special picture in the dark, as did most people, because they didn't count on anyone seeing them. Kon did; Kon could see Tim move his hand from his face and yawn silently, he could see how sleepy he was, face slack and expressionless.
“I was going to crash into your room,” Tim admitted.
Even half asleep, Kon knew that inviting Tim to stay in bed with him would be crossing some unspoken but well known boundary of a normal friendship. But the dark worked on him too, and the implicit safety of it made him stupid.
“Idiot.” He yawned. “Perfectly fine bed here.”
Tim politely ignored that suggestion. “How's your head? Feeling better?”
He was sweet. Annoying in his worry, sometimes, but sweet. It was hard for Kon not to think so now, with one foot still in dreamland.
“Better if you stayed.”
Tim sighed softly. “I'm not crowding on this bed with you. You hog all the blankets.”
“And you snore,” Kon threw back, petulant, and was just a second too late to realize his mistake in it.
He could see a slow smile stretch across Tim's face. “All the more reason for me to leave.”
He got up from where he'd been crouching next to the bed with a quick good night said over the shoulder, and Kon watched him go, disappointed but not present enough to be an active participant in it. He was out cold again before Tim even shut the door behind himself, and in the morning the memory would seem more like a stray dream. Or so he would tell himself to avoid facing his own embarrassments.