Chapter Text
The fight had taken fourteen hours.
Fourteen. ACTUAL. Hours.
Every time they thought they had completely eliminated every batch of weird terrible goo monsters another set popped up like hello mother fuckers you THOUGHT you were done. It was exhausting, and every super that was part of it was not going to be completely rid of the green gunk that stuck in gloopy lobs in their hair for a while. It was genuinely one of the worst fights he'd been in for a while. Fucking marathon of annoyance. He was convinced that he still had slime up his nose.
Which, in Kon's opinion, meant that he deserved a medal, a hot shower, a Hawaiian pizza with ZERO judgemental stares, and possibly to be declared legally dead for the next couple days so nobody could ask him to do anything.
Instead, he was sitting on a rooftop in Metropolis with a 2 liter bottle of grape Zesti, a half-crushed box of donuts beside him, and Kara stealing the good ones when he wasn't looking. He was willing to let it go. Mostly because he was too tired to fight her for them and knew she would fight dirty anyway. Instead he just wordlessly passed her the bottle of Zesti after she held her hand out for it like it was a flask of whisky. It wasn't much but honestly they both deserved this. The rest of the fam was dealing with the news after the fight. Kon and Kara had both been on the scene first, been fighting longer then everyone, and were determined to be the two most likely to say a curse word on national television at this point. They were excused.
His phone had been buzzing for the last twenty minutes since he'd turned it back on. Messages from the Titans, messages from the League, messages from people asking if he was okay, messages from ONE person who apparently thought him being engaged in fourteen hours of near-constant combat was the perfect time to ask if he could help them move a couch tomorrow. He'd been ignoring most of them in favor of scrolling through the Young Justice group chat, which had accumulated over four hundred messages in his absence.
Bart had apparently discovered his new favorite energy drink and Cassie was threatening to confiscate his entire supply. Someone had posted a picture of a raccoon stealing a hot dog.
Normal stuff. Good stuff. Just the kind of mindless nonsense only his best friends could produce that he really needed right now. Fuck that guy who wanted him to move their couch, the dank memes of the Young Justice chat were far more important.
Then he saw Tim's name.
Timothy Drake has sent 3 images.
Kon tapped on them without thinking.
The first was a selfie. Tim was looking really good (as always) in a soft gray sweater, his hair a little messy, his cheek pressed against the shoulder of a blonde guy Kon vaguely recognized from the occasional mention in Tim's life. Some old friend from school he'd been reconnecting with recently. Bernard, right? Bernard Dowd.
The second picture was Bernard kissing Tim on the cheek.
Tim was smiling. Not the little smirk he used when he'd unearthed some obscure clue everyone else had overlooked, nor the crooked, self-satisfied grin he wore when he was about to be an insufferable little genius about something. It wasn't even that rare, genuinely happy smile usually reserved for his closest friends that Kon had seen countless times over the years.
This was softer and unguarded in a way he couldn't quite remember ever seeing him. He looked... happy.
The third picture was the two of them sticking their tongues out at the camera, Bernard's arm looped around Tim's shoulders and there was a slight blur to it that made Kon think they must have been laughing mere seconds before taking the picture.
Underneath Tim had that they had to take about hundred selfies before they got one his boyfriend really liked, followed by a string of laughing emojis.
Kon stared.
He wasn't sure how long he stared, actually. Long enough for his thumb to stop moving. Long enough for the sounds of the city below to grow a little distant as the wind picked at his hair. He was vaguely aware that Kara had nudged him with the soda bottle, silently asking if he wanted it back. There were other replies under Tim's from Bart and Cassie but it was like Kon had suddenly forgotten how to read or the only messages in the group chat at all were those three photos and one reply from Tim.
Boyfriend.
The word sat in his heavy in his mind like some kind of object so alien and bizarre he just couldn't properly wrap his head around it.
Tim had a boyfriend. Tim was dating someone. Tim had dated other people before. Obviously. Other girls. But Kon had never even conceived of the possibility that Tim would date a guy.
A guy.
Which was... okay? Yeah. Sure. Why wouldn't Tim date a guy? Tim could date whoever he wanted. Obviously. Kon wasn't an idiot. He knew guys dated guys. He knew Tim dated people. He knew, in the abstract, that Tim could be attracted to men. There were plenty of attractive men out there. Tim was one of them. Why couldn't Tim, an attractive man also date another attractive man? There wasn't anything... strange about that despite what his stomach was telling him.
He'd just never really thought about it.
And that was the weird part, wasn't it?
Kon had known Tim for years. He knew in the mornings he drank his coffee black and thick as tar because he was a freak like that before swapping over to energy drinks from lunch onward (used to be Monster but Zesti had come out with their own branded energy drink a few years back and it was all over from there). He knew he had a habit of pacing when he was thinking and there was one spot in Mount Justice that Kon teased him about and called the Tim 'groove' that he swore he'd worn down. He knew when someone he cared about was in trouble there were no lengths too great or too daunting for him to tackle. Kon knew everything there was to know about Tim Drake. Or.. He thought he did.
Tim had dated before but he'd never really thought about him as Someone Else's boyfriend or Someone Else's person to kiss, or Someone Else's person to hold close and take stupid selfies with and make laugh over things nobody else understood. And if these thoughts were coming to him now. These thoughts seeping into his mind. This Someone Else. Who was the not Someone Else Kon thought Tim SHOULD be with?
Kon's stomach clenched. He felt... he wasn't sure how he felt. A strange sickening feeling that he could not name was coiling somewhere inside him. Unpleasant maybe.
He locked his phone.
Moments later he unlocked it and looked at the pictures again.
It was a small thought. Barely a thought at all, really. Just a tiny, terrible click somewhere inside his chest. Because suddenly he was thinking about Tim's hands and his smile. Tim leaning against him on the couch during movie nights, falling asleep halfway through whatever they'd put on (Kon would never wake him because he was always worried he didn't get enough of that). Tim standing close enough that Kon could feel the warmth of him. Tim laughing at one of Kon's jokes, rolling his eyes, bumping their shoulders together like it was the most natural thing in the world.
A hundred thousand little moments of closeness and connection Kon had never thought twice about. All those moments he'd just filed away somewhere under 'Tim stuff' a category so fundamental and permanent that he'd never once wondered what it meant or that maybe it was more important then his brain initially thought it was.
His throat felt tight.
This was stupid. He was tired and overworked and overthinking things now. He'd been punched through three buildings today. He'd taken a blast of pressurized goo to the face that would have turned an ordinary person into a smear on the sidewalk. He'd spent fourteen hours dealing with some alien mad scientist's fun weekend project and could still fly strait after.
And somehow... some way... three pictures of Tim Drake only one of which he's being kissed by a blonde guy had somehow managed to do more damage to him.
"Hey," Kara's voice cut through the noise in his head, "You okay?"
Kon looked up too quickly.
"Yeah," the answer came out stiff and automatic. It felt bed even as it left his mouth. He didn't have an explanation as to why it felt like that.
Kara glanced down at his phone, then back at him. Her expression didn't change much, but she'd spent enough time around her family to recognize when one of them was lying through their damn teeth. That and she could probably hear his heart rattling in his chest. The absolute cheater.
"That sounded convincing."
"Cause I am! Fine that is," he shrugged, "As well as either of us can be. We did just spend how long getting slapped around the city by slime monsters?
"Mm-hm..."
Kara reached for the donut box without taking her eyes off him. Kon let her take the jelly filled one without the usual protest. Aka his favorite one. The best one. The one he always saved for last and the one donut in the box he would absolutely fight her for.
That, apparently, was what finally made her look properly concerned.
"Kon."
He ignored her in favor of staring down at his phone again. The group chat had long moved on. Bart was defending his theft of Cassie's cookies as some kind of life saving measure since speedsters needed so many calories to keep going and Cassie was describing in detail how many times she was going to wring his neck if he didn't replace them. Tim told Bart he should just replace them, even he wouldn't be able to outrun her her in this case.
But Tim hadn't said anything else about the photos or his boyfriend.
Kon could still see the pictures if he wanted to. He could look at them again, examine every little detail, try to figure out what exactly had happened to his brain in the last five minutes. What exactly about them had caused such a catastrophic short circuit in his brain and made his stomach flip.
He could probably even make a joke about it. Something stupid. Something loud. Something that would make Kara laugh and not ask any more questions and give him a reason not to think about the strange, aching sensation spreading through his chest and not going away.
Instead, he swallowed hard after a long uncomfortable moment.
"I think," he said slowly, "I might be an idiot."
"That isn't exactly breaking news," Kara considered him as she took a bite of his jelly donut.
"Wow. Okay. Cool. Love the support. Really feeling the family bonding tonight," Kon huffed, finally grabbing the bottle of Zesti from her to take a swig.
"You said it, not me."
He tried to laugh. It came out wrong. It sounded forced and ugly and fell flat in the air. It didn't do anything to ease Kara's concerns... or his own. His eyes drifted back to the phone in his hands after an uncomfortable silence settled around them again.
Tim was happy. That was the thing. Even through a photograph, even through a screen, Kon could see it. He was happy, and Kon wanted him to be happy. He wanted that so badly that the thought of anything else was unbearable.
So why did his chest hurt?
Why wasn't HE happy that Tim was obviously happy? Was he a bad friend? A bad person?
Why did he feel as if someone had quietly taken something away from him when he hadn't even known he'd been holding it? Kon had obviously never asked Tim out. Never thought about asking him out. Never even really let himself consider what it might be like to kiss him, because Tim was Tim, and they were them, and there were some things in life you just didn't question. They were both guys after all. They were best friends.
Except apparently there were things you should question.
Like why the thought of Tim kissing someone else made Kon feel like he'd swallowed a handful of rusty nails.
He dragged a hand over his face and then stared out over the city. All those lights. All those people going about their lives, completely unaware that his entire world had just tilted a few degrees off its axis. Unaware that after fighting goo monsters for hours, Superboy was having a bigger struggle wrangling what his own stupid emotions meant.
He dropped his head into his hands and because the universe had apparently decided that fourteen hours of fighting for his life and three photos wasn't enough suffering for one day, his phone buzzed again.
A new text from Tim.
didn't see you on the news but hope you survived the goocalypse. text me back so i know you're okay❤️
Kon stared at the little heart and swallowed the lump in his throat that kept coming back. They sent each other flirty emojis all the time with their texts. It was funny. It was a bit. But it didn't really feel like a joke for some reason now He shakily sent him back a 'safe and sound gonna sleep for a hundred years now' and resisted the urge to add the blowing a kiss emoji to the end of it.
Then, very carefully, he turned his phone facedown on the rooftop.
He needed another donut.
He needed about a hundred years just to think.
He needed, more than anything, to go back about ten minutes to when he was a blissfully ignorant idiot who had never seen his best friend post three specific photos of himself and boyfriend.