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It's another quiet night at the farm. The cicadas chirp, the old house groans with the wind, and Kon struggles to stay awake as Tim drones on and on about his latest case during their routine phone call.
"-and then Jason burst into the warehouse on his motorcycle, and I mean on it, he just rode it straight through the side of the place like it was made of paper — can you believe it? I spent all this time casing the place and waiting for the deal to happen so I could give the police evidence needed to put them all in jail, but noooooo. They see Big Bad Red Hood and they all start shooting and my case is compromised beyond repair."
Kon nods along to the story as a tinny sigh comes through the phone.
"And it's not like I can just leave him to deal with all the guys down there alone, right? So I jump down from the rafters to help him fight, and he points his gun at me! It's like he didn't know I was there even though we literally just talked about our patrol routes and plans earlier in the Cave. So I had to dodge their guns and Hood's guns. He only shot at me, like, once, but still, it's the principle of the matter."
The rant slows to a stop until the only sound Kon registers through his battered cell phone is Tim's breath coming out in angry huffs. He counts them; it takes 4 sets of inhaling and exhaling before Tim's breath slows to a reasonable pace that isn't really audible. Kon almost wishes Tim was still angrily ranting or riling himself up by thinking of his annoying brothers. He likes hearing all of Tim's noises over the phone, he likes knowing Tim is right there, with Kon, even when they are half a country apart.
Kon shifts in bed, trying to pull his phone (set on speaker to make it easier to hear Tim and all of his wonderful exaggerated storytelling) impossibly closer to his ear where it rests. With the limits of audio quality in his phone and the microphone of Tim's standard off-duty and non-Bat-tech phone, he can just barely hear the remnants of Tim's intentional breathing. He focuses on that sound: soft inhale for 4 seconds, holding for 8, give or take any murmuring to himself as he continues the report he's working on, exhale for 4, hold again, repeat.
He's almost in dreamland when the pattern changes with a hitch, it changes as though something caught on his lungs. He was so close to drifting off, but then Tim calls out his name.
"Kon? Are you asleep?
He should respond. He wants to respond. But his eyes are heavy and his head is full of fuzzy cotton and his tongue doesn't want to move to form any semblance of the English language.
"I didn't even reach the best part of the story," Tim says, but his tone is different than before. It's not frustrated or the exaggerated tone he uses to keep Kon on the edge of his seat during these retellings of patrol. It's… softer. Warmer. "…but I guess that's one of the reasons why I love you."
Kon's eyes snap open. He wants to ask Tim to repeat that. He needs to ask Tim to tell him what he meant by that. But the only thing that comes out of his mouth is, "Huh?" and even that is more of a breath than a word.
Still, Tim must hear him because all noise from the tiny speaker of the phone stops.
"Tim?" Kon is still breathless. How can he even think about breathing normally when he just heard… well, he doesn't know if he heard correctly. But how can he think about breathing when Tim might've… when Tim… He just needs to hear Tim say it again. He needs Tim to confirm that that's what he said, that he meant it, that Kon's heart isn't beating wildly out of control for nothing.
"No, nothing. Just… said I gottagobye."
The line beeps as Tim cuts the call.
His gaze falls to the phone in his hands. He stares at that screen — call ended after 1 hour and 38 minutes, shorter than usual — until the light dims and then completely fades, leaving him in his dark room with nothing but cicadas to keep him company with the ringing in his ears.
Kon's body moves before he can think about what he's doing: he pulls on his fluffy bathrobe over his pajamas (or lack of them) and shoots off into the night sky.
The air prickles against his skin, but it's not unpleasant. Muscle memory kicks in and a layer of TTK surrounds him, enveloping him in a cushion of air that is entirely impervious to the natural elements above the clouds. No drops of water hitting his face and frizzing his hair. No wind resistance slowing down his flight speed that is nearing dangerously close to breaking the sound barrier. Just him, his TTK, and the silence that can only come with being thousands of feet in the air. It's one of the few things that can almost always bring him back to his senses and out of his own head (that and Tim. Unless Tim is the cause of him getting lost in his head. Which is often. But that's not the point).
As he nears Wayne Manor and, more importantly, Tim, his hearing picks up Tim in his room. Tim sounds worse than he did when he hung up the phone. Tim's lungs rattle with shaky breaths that only pause for long enough for a few words to slip past. Words like, "No, no, no" or "I fucked up."
Kon stops just outside of Tim's bedroom window where he can hear everything even without his superpowers. Tim is pacing back and forth on his carpeted floor with socked feet. If it weren't for the panic on his face and the harsh way he chews his bottom lip until traces of blood escape the sensitive skin, then Kon would find the scene cute. But Tim is stressed and panicked.
He knocks on the window.
Tim stops pacing with his back toward Kon. He's still, so still… It reminds Kon of all those times he found Tim in uniform on Gotham rooftops with binoculars to his eyes. Each time, Kon would poke and prod and watch as Robin would grit his teeth and bite his tongue and pretend to be a stone gargoyle while watching some distant street for some crime or other. Kon would give a lot to have that Robin that ignored him over a Tim that forces his heart rate to steady and his face to turn to stone before he finally turns to face him.
Kon knocks on the window again when Tim doesn't move to open it.
Tim continues to stare, his face still except for the speck of blood on his lip that threatens to slide down his chin. His gargoyle act has definitely improved since they were 14 and new to heroics and couldn't help but let their anger get the best of them at times.
When Tim continues to ignore Kon's request (a very polite request, mind you), Kon takes matters into his own hands and uses his patented TTK to find the window lock, unlock it, and slide the glass pane to the side so he can crawl into Tim's bedroom like he has a million times before.
Kon takes a step closer. And then another step and another until he's close enough reach out and touch Tim. "Please say something. Anything. You're kinda scaring me, Rob."
"What do you want me to say?" Tim sighs and his mask crumbles. His whole body slumps forward, leaning toward Kon but not touching him, never touching him. The drop of blood on his lip wobbles with the motion and drips onto his chin. Tim doesn't wipe it away.
"How about you start with what you said on the phone? Because it sounded like-" Kon cuts himself off as warmth floods his cheeks. "I mean, I couldn't have heard that right, right? Because you've never… I didn't think…"
"I said 'I love you,' okay?" It's only from years of knowing Tim that Kon can hear the resignation in his voice as he continues. "I thought you were asleep. I never would have said it if I knew you would hear it and now things between us are going to be awkward and you won't want to be around me and-"
"I love you, too."
Tim's head snaps up from where he had been avoiding Kon's gaze to finally look at him. If Tim weren't using his freaky Bat-techniques, Kon is sure that his heart would be competing with his own for the fastest rhythm.
Kon reaches for Tim's face, keeping his movements slow and in sight to avoid spooking Tim — not that Tim can be spooked on a regular day, but this is far from normal. His palm settles on Tim's cheek (warm skin, getting warmer the longer he cradles Tim's face), he extends his thumb over Tim's lips (lips that he has imagined touching, kissing… he can't repeat half of the thoughts he has had about those lips) to wipe away the blood. Kon takes in the redness in his face and his wide eyes with dilated pupils. He has to hold back a smirk at the thought of his Robin being flustered and at a loss for words. His not-a-smirk with one corner of his mouth upturned only widens the longer he stares at Tim. "I love you, Tim. I think I have for a long time."
"You really mean it?" Tim asks.
"Yes. I love you. I'll say it a hundred times if I have to."
"Oh," Tim releases a breath and, with it, all of the remaining tension in his body. He falls forward into Kon, burying his face in Kon's chest and wrapping his arms around him. Tim's breathing is back to the normal, consistent ba-dum, dum that always acts as an anchor for Kon.
They stand there, in the middle of Tim's room, with the window open and the moon just barely shining in from outside, taking solace in each other's arms after the emotional rollercoaster they both went through.
"…you know," Tim mumbles into his chest after a while, "you could have gotten dressed before flying here in the middle of the night."
He pulls away from Tim, not completely, just enough to look down at himself. Tim was right. Of course he's right. Kon is just in his boxers and his bathrobe that he didn't take the time to tie closed.
Kon groans.
Tim laughs.
And Kon… He can't be upset at the teasing for his (lack of) clothing when Tim is in front of him, still in his arms, and smiling he just won the lottery. He pulls Tim closer to him, back against his bare chest where they exchange heat with each other, and he thinks, Yeah, I could get used to this.