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"When are you going to tell him like it is instead of using these tricks?" Kon
asked
suddenly as he used a pair of tweezers to pull the quills out of Jon's back, who was standing hunched forward with his shirt up and a pout on his face.
This magical porcupine wouldn't have been a big deal if he had focused on the little monster and not on anything else going on around him except what he was doing. In his defense, it hadn't been intentional. He had only recently begun to develop his other powers and, he admitted, he still had trouble at times to block out the whole world to focus on the individual, creating that strange stereophonic effect in his ears that confused and disoriented him a bit; Jon did his best not to get distracted and to channel every power into every cell of his body to put his father's and Kon's advice into practice, but it wasn't easy at all and, to make matters worse, the crazy hormones of a 13-year-old didn't help. And that was the point.
The powers he already possessed had begun to run wild, becoming more accentuated with his emotions and sometimes even tending to erupt in real bursts of energy, like the time he had started thinking about a classmate and almost set the school dance banner on fire; his father had told him it was normal, that he too had had such problems and would teach him to control himself, but that still had not saved Jon from embarrassment and he had locked himself in his room with the pillow pressed to his face. For a while, over the next few months, he had managed to follow that advice and control himself, but the problem had returned at a somewhat... odd time.
A normal night on patrol, a night like any other, he and Damian fighting bad guys and rescuing kittens in trees, and then - and then there had been "the moment". Damian sitting on the branch with the kitten purring and snuggling in his arms, the reflection of the moon on his face and the glimmer of a smile, and Jon had been left like a dumbfounded man, staring at him with his mouth open and heat on his cheeks. He had had to flee with his hands pressed to his eyes, mumbling confused apologies, and the next day, and the day after that, they had both acted as if nothing had happened. Just nothing, as if it had never happened. And Jon had really tried to keep on pretending that nothing had happened, to tell himself that it had been something dictated by the moment and simply by the atmosphere, but day after day, week after week, something had happened. He had started to have feelings for Damian and was acting like an idiot to get noticed, creating borderline absurd situations to get his boyfriend's attention. The moral of the story? That very day, at a time when he should have been concentrating, his ears had gotten lost listening to Damian's heartbeat and he had ended up becoming a pincushion.
At that thought, Jon let out a long groan and ran both hands over his face. Idiot, idiot, idiot. Stupid him and stupid 13 year old hormonal body. "I can't just go over him and say, 'Hey, D, you know I like you? Let's hang out," Jon muttered a few moments later, cursing as another feather was ripped from his skin. Damn, magic sucked.
"Oh. So pretending you can't fly yet, falling face down, hearing Damian mumble about it and helping you pull yourself together is part of your grand plan to win his heart?" Kon
laughed
, and Jon frowned.
"I didn't say that."
"Ah, so you want to impress with your new punk look?" Kon huffed hilariously as he pulled out another quill, ignoring the groan Jon let out. "Maybe I should leave some of those quills in your skin, Damian might appreciate it and..."
"Argh, stop it!" Jon
exclaimed
, covering his ears with his hands in embarrassment. He was burning, wasn't he? He felt like he was on fire. "I can't tell Damian. I can't tell him anything, what if he looks at me the wrong way? What if I ruin everything? What if he thinks I'm weird?"
"You're half alien, you're already weird."
"Not helping!"
"What I'm trying to to say," Kon said, slipping off the last quill and disinfecting the skin more for safety than real necessity, "is that you both have your fair share of strange things, and Damian doesn't seems as the type to look down on someone for that. I mean, he's a former assassin and you two faced a giant alien starfish just two years ago! That's not nothing. The worst that can happen is that he tells you no, to get a move on and get back on patrol."
Jon said nothing for what seemed like endless moments, his eyes fixed on the floor and his senses focused on what Kon was doing behind his back. He felt the cold, wet disinfectant on his skin, his brother's fingers running over his skin, making sure there was no sting left, but meanwhile his mind was racing with thoughts of what Kon had just told him. Maybe it was true: maybe Damian wouldn't make a big deal out of it, maybe he was the one making a big deal out of it, maybe they would laugh about it and put it aside and be friends as before, and after all it was just a crush, right? A simple crush on a friend he cared about and had learned to love and respect. That was it, right? Right?
"Maybe you're right." Jon sighed and pulled down his shirt again, muttering a "thank you" before standing up. "Maybe I'm just, I don't know, blowing things out of proportion?"
"Would you like your big brother to put in a good word?" Kon
asked
in reply, and Jon turned to stare at him dazedly, then widened his eyes.
"No, no, no, no! Don't interfere, don't you dare!" Jon shouted in bewilderment, and Kon laughed, ruffling his hair.
"I was just kidding, little one. I'm sure you can handle it." Kon winked at him. "Just be yourself, ask him for ice cream, a bat-burger... things like that, for starters."
"What if he says no?"
"Nobody says no to junk food," Kon joked with a smile, dropping to her knees to lift him onto her shoulder. "Come on, hop on. I'll show you the perfect place to take him, you'll win him over."
Jon bit his lower lip and looked at him uncertainly. "I don't know how to fly... in theory," he reminded him, mimicking the words in quotation marks with his fingers, but Kon's smile brightened.
"Who ever said you had to know how to fly?"
Days later, sitting with Damian on the wooden platform of the wind pump, laughing and joking as they shared a sandwich and watched the sun set over the wheat fields, Jon understood what Kon had been trying to explain to him. Impressing Damian, being a jerk, trying to get his attention - none of that mattered. As long as he was himself, as long as he proved to be a good friend and appreciated their time together, things would take care of themselves.
Maybe Damian would return his feelings, maybe not, maybe things would evolve over time or stay the same, but one thing Jon was sure of: Damian would remain his best friend anyway.