Chapter Text
January
Things have been tense for Tim lately. He calls Kon regularly because he promised – once a week like clockwork – and he talks about last week when Penguin tried to make a move on Black Mask, and Black Mask tried to make a move on Penguin, and Tim had to deal with both of them alone because Stephanie was still pissed at him, and it’s not like Tim can’t handle Penguin and Black Mask’s goons coming at him from both sides, its more that he can’t handle Black Mask to his left spitting out half assed jokes that he probably looked up on google specifically for this occasion, and Penguin to his right straight up quacking while Tim keeps their respective hoards at bay like some kind of glorified babysitter.
Kon laughs and says, “Man, that’s rough buddy,” and tells Tim that honestly though he should shut up and be thankful for what he’s got because Ma killed Kon’s second favorite chicken that morning and he now has to eat her for dinner, and he couldn’t even be there for the execution because he had to touch cow udders for the umpteenth time in his short and horrible life.
Tim snorts because that’s what he always does and everything feels awful and rehearsed and Kon doesn’t bring up Tim being in love with him even once. In fact if Tim didn’t know better he’d think he dreamed the whole thing. Except he didn’t, and Kon is just… ignoring it, which Tim always kind of thought would be his preference when faced with rejection, but honestly now that it’s happening he would prefer almost anything else.
Eventually one day Kon brings up the Titans. Tim sort of tries to avoid saying anything about that because he really wants Kon to start going back to the tower on weekends so that he can go back and maybe when they’re there surrounded by their friends Tim will actually feel normal around Kon again. But Tim doesn’t want to push, so when Kon calls him out of the blue one day and opens with, “I think I want to go to the tower this weekend.”
Tim says, “Are you sure?”
They make plans to go that weekend and when Kon asks if he’ll be there, Tim says, “yes.” instead of what he should have said which is, “I don’t know, maybe,” because Bruce is still around, but Dick is down with some kind of stomach flu which means if Tim leaves, their patrol team will be moderately cut.
This being the case, Tim decides he needs to call Dick ASAP. He sits back on his couch, staring blankly at the screen of his laptop which returns his gaze with cold, reflective disinterest, then he dials Wayne tower’s penthouse expecting Alfred’s sweet, aged voice to answer the phone with kind enthusiasm and hearing instead the deeply disarming tones of a devil on the precipice of puberty.
“What do you want, Drake?” Damian says. “I’m busy right now.”
Tim barely bites back the snarky response on the tip of his tongue and says instead, “I’m just calling to see how Dick is.”
“Well then you shouldn’t have called because he is an inept, sniveling mess, and he needs my constant attention which, currently, you are depriving him of.”
Tim lets his head loll against the back of the couch and sighs. “Could you put him on the phone for me?”
“No, he is asleep, and even if he weren’t, I’d never allow it.”
“Listen, I need-,”
“Master Damian, I ask that in the future you kindly refrain from answering the Wayne Penthouse’s home phone yourself as it is, in fact, my job.”
Tim exhales a breath of relief and is about to say something but Damian cuts in immediately.
“Pennyworth are you dull? Grayson is ill. Anyone could be attempting to extract delicate information from him in this vulnerable state, and with an oaf like you screening his calls their success would be assured.”
“They would need to have quite a lot of delicate information already in order to even have access to this number. So please, hang up the phone and allow me to speak with Master Timothy.”
Damian mumbles something probably vulgar and then says, “Fine, but if anything happens to Grayson it’s on your hands.”
There’s an audible click and then a short breath from Alfred before he says, “Now, what can I help you with Master Tim?”
“How sick is Dick, really?” Tim asks.
“He is quite ill, but I believe he’ll make a full recovery. His fever hasn’t been so bad. It’s mostly the, ah, vomiting that’s really keeping him bed bound.”
“Right,” Tim says. “So he’s cleared for visitation.”
“Absolutely, we’d love to have you, Master Tim. I’ll prepare something nice for dinner tonight.”
“I-,”
“We’ll be expecting you around seven, then?”
“Um,”
“I’m afraid Master Dick won’t be able to join us but I’m sure the company will be good for Damian.”
“Y-yeah, sure.” Tim says, and then adds, “Maybe Damian should eat with Dick.”
Alfred laughs and tells Tim that it would be a miracle if they can get Damian out of Dick’s bedroom anyway. When they hang up, Tim looks at his phone and finds that it’s nearly six o’clock which means he’d better get ready.
÷÷÷÷÷÷
In his life, Tim has been exposed to a great number of high tension encounters but he doesn’t think he’s ever been able to feel unspoken threats so palpably before he met Damian Wayne. Standing at the side of Dick’s bed like a trained hound, arms folded, eyes following Tim around the room like the finger on an Uncle Sam poster, Damian is a true pint-sized vision of terror. Granted, history has taught Tim to anticipate being physically attacked when existing in the same room as Damian and this may be coloring his current emotions.
All of this is a stark juxtaposition to Dick who is smiling benignly at him from underneath a nest of blankets and saying, “Tim!” in a pathetically happy tone. “I’m so glad you’re here, Tim. Damian is a horrible nurse, he’s so mean.” Dick turns his head and shoots Damian a harsh look which Damian returns with his trademark “-tt-,” and a roll of his eyes.
“Listen,” Tim says. “I didn’t just come to visit.”
At this, Dick scoffs and says, “Of course.”
“I was wondering if you could do me a favor, actually…”
“Grayson is in no condition to be doing the likes of you favors!” Damian says, and for a moment Tim half expects him to also jump on top of the bed and hiss.
“Can you leave?” Tim says.
“Ugh,” Dick raises his hands in the air and says, “If you guys start fighting I’m going to throw up on both of you right here. Cut it out.”
Damian’s proverbial fur settles, but he’s still glaring when he says, “I’m not going anywhere, Drake.”
Thankfully Dick holds out his arm and waves Damian away saying, “It’s fine Damian. Alfred probably needs your culinary advice and expertise in the kitchen.”
“I’m not an infant, Grayson. Do not patronize me.” Despite his words Damian moves around the bed and towards Dick’s door, but not before also saying, “Just don’t come running to me when Drake betrays and kills you in your weakened state.”
“Well,” Dick says, “If that happens I’ll be dead so you’ll have nothing to worry about.”
Damian slams the door on his way out and Dick groans again, throwing an arm over his eyes. Tim takes a moment to sit on the edge of Dick’s bed.
“I don’t need anything serious,” Tim says, and Dick lowers his arm. “I’m just… kind of wondering if you could call Steph for me since she’s not talking to me right now.”
Dick pushes himself up against his pillows and says, “Sure. I assume I’ll be relaying some kind of message?”
“Yeah, I uh… I need somebody to cover my patrol this weekend. I was kind of hoping she could get Jason to do it.”
“I have so many questions.” Dick says.
Tim sighs. “Kon is going to be at the tower this weekend and he wants me there. It’s his first time back, so…”
Dick’s mouth forms an ‘o’.
“Also, from what I can tell, Jason’s been making some kind of actual effort lately to be a decent human being, and I still need to figure out how to get Stephanie to talk to me again. I’m hoping maybe giving my route to Jason for a few nights might be a good olive branch.”
“Probably not a bad idea,” Dick says. “Did she at least send you their Christmas card?”
“Yeah,” Tim says, “It was signed and said ‘Suck it, Nerd’ on the back.”
Dick has the audacity to laugh. Then he sighs and says, “I had to make copies of mine because Damian keeps taking them off the fridge and setting them on fire.”
“Imagine that.”
“I think he has a crush on Stephanie,” Dick says reaching feebly for the glass of ginger ale on his bedside table.
Tim hands it to him. “I’m extremely skeptical of the idea that Damian is capable of romantic emotions.”
Dick rolls his eyes. “Damian’s eleven,” he says. “Anyway, I’ll give Stephanie a call. Are you staying for dinner?”
Tim gives Dick his best impersonation of Bruce Wayne’s overscheduled CEO business man smile and says, “Alfred wants me to, but I’ve kinda got a lot on my plate right now so probably not.”
“Mmhmm, I’m sure that’s the reason,” Dick says. “Now get out of here before Alfred catches you or I puke.”
Holding his hands up, Tim takes a step backwards and says, “Don’t have to tell me twice.”
÷÷÷÷÷÷
Tim receives no actual correspondence himself from either Stephanie or Jason, but word gets to him via a text message from Dick with entirely too many emoji’s in it that Jason and Steph will each take half of his patrol over the weekend which lifts another weight off of Tim’s shoulders that he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying. For a bizarre and surreal moment, Tim almost feels happy.
Then he looks at the clock and realizes there’s no way he’s getting to Titans Tower before nine tonight even if he left right now – and he hasn’t even started packing yet.
When he does finally get into the tower he shows up in civvies and finds Kon, Bart, and Jaime playing Mario Kart on the big screen. That same happy feeling washes over him and it’s such a peaceful, foreign emotion that it comes with an accompanying sense of foreboding.
They don’t seem to notice him come in so he walks up to the back of the couch and leans over the edge. Kon’s head turns immediately with an accusatory smile and says, “You’re so late dude.”
“Sorry,” Tim says. “Lost track of time.” Then he squints at the back of Kon’s head. “Are you letting your hair grow out?”
“No,” Is Kon’s immediate first response. He misses his turn on Rainbow Road and falls straight off the edge, cursing, then says, “I don’t know. Maybe. I just keep forgetting to ask Ma to cut it.”
There’s a curl starting to form right at the front and Tim doesn’t have the heart to tell Kon it makes him look just like Clark because something tells him that wouldn’t sit well with Kon so he settles for running his hand through Kon’s hair in what is supposed to resemble a friendly ruffle but which in hindsight feels like it was a much too intimate gesture. In his usual fashion, Tim recovers by extracting his hand as quickly as possible and leaving the room immediately without speaking.
He barely hears Kon yelling, “Goodnight, weirdo!” at him as he rounds the corner of the main hallway.
÷÷÷÷÷÷
Things seem normal. Kon and Bart are fighting over the last frozen waffle when Tim enters the Titan’s kitchen that morning. Cassie and Jaime are watching them with unprecedented scrutiny, and both groan in agony when Vic walks through the kitchen and takes the waffle while Bart and Kon are preoccupied attempting to commit double noogie homicide. Tim grabs a yogurt from the fridge and smiles.
He runs diagnostics on the mainframe and Kon hovers nearby for most of the day, trying to goad Tim into playing Would You Rather. It doesn’t really work. Not because Tim won’t play, but because every time Kon thinks he’s got a really good one, Tim finds a loophole in his question. It seems to be driving Kon insane, but he doesn’t leave and he doesn’t stop trying. Eventually Bart joins in too, but none of Bart’s questions make any sense and in the end they stop answering the Would You Rather’s completely and just start trying to one up each other’s questions.
Its dusk when Vic comes in to tell them they’ve got a lead on some local arms dealers and the team is heading out to do reconnaissance and Tim doesn’t realize he’s in trouble until Kon turns to look at him expectantly and Tim glances briefly at the Titan’s mainframe, still running diagnostics.
“I’m,” He gestures to the screen. “Our security system is going to be vulnerable until I’m finished here. I can’t-,” Tim bites off the end of his own sentence when Vic forcibly pulls him from his chair.
“Come on man, get out there. Wouldn’t be right if you didn’t get some action while you’re here, since you’re never here. I’ll stick around and monitor your scripts.” The smile that Vic sends Tim is suspiciously knowing, but Tim knows Vic doesn’t… well, know, and Kon looks ecstatic, so Tim smiles back and says thanks. Then he’s swept up into the familiar blur of prepping for a mission, gearing up, debriefing and before he even knows it he’s bobbing and weaving through traffic on the R-Cycle while Cassie, Kon, and Jaime soar above him, and Bart runs beside him, Gar picking up the rear in cheetah form.
It’s exhilarating and Tim would be lying if he said he didn’t miss this, but the team soon splits up to cover ground and Tim worries that Kon might put up a fight about that but he doesn’t, so Tim, Gar, and Jaime break off to cover locations in Fisherman’s Warf and China town while Bart, Kon, and Cassie take the Mission district.
Nothing really pans out until they stumble upon a couple of idiots showing off their new highly illegal weaponry in a China Town back alley, but Tim doesn’t even get a chance to call in the location before he hears Cassie’s voice over the Comm.
“Red Robin, come in!”
Tim, who is perched on the ledge of an apartment building next to a bored looking Jaime and Gar, says, “Report.”
“We’ve got, uh…” on the other line, underneath the slightly panicked tone of Cassie’s voice, Tim can hear some sort of commotion. The familiar din of Bart having a superspeed episode of word vomit is just audible. “Kind of a problem out here.”
“What’s going on?” Tim asks, leaning back from the concrete lip of the roof. Jaime glances at him and says something to the scarab, pocketing the bag of chicken whizees he’d been eating.
“Well…” Cassie says. “I think something’s wrong with Superboy?”
Tim shakes off the chill that sinks straight from his chest to his stomach and stands up. “What happened? Tell me exactly what’s going on.”
“I don’t know,” Cassie says. “One minute he was fine, we were tracking some goons down Folsom, the next minute he’s freaking out and laser beamed Beast Boy’s face right off a billboard!”
Tim glances at Gar, who is currently in the form of a small green bird picking at pebbles on the roof.
“You mean Gar’s face on the billboard?” Tim says.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Yikes,” Jaime says, having evidently tuned into the conversation via whatever bizarre alien frequency the Blue Beetle suit uses to communicate.
“Anyway, I’ve got him pinned down, but his… it’s like he can’t turn off his heat vision or something, he’s going burn a hole through the ozone layer. And I don’t think he’s breathing right.”
“He’s having a panic attack. Is Bart there? Bart can you hear me?”
There’s a rustling sound, Tim’s pretty sure Cassie is smacking Bart, or otherwise manhandling him, and then she says, “Answer your comm. Bart, Robin’s trying to talk to you.”
“SorrysorryTim?YougottahelpKon’sfreakinoutTimI’mfreakinoutsomethingswrongsomething’s-,”
“Whoa, esé, calm down!” Jaime says. “You’re not going to help Superboy by giving yourself a panic attack, bro.”
Tim motions for Gar and Jaime to follow him off the roof. “Kon’s going to be fine, but you and Cassie have to work together if you want to help him. We’re moving to your location now, but until we get there, I need you to see if you can’t remember reading any psychology books during your excavation of the San Fran library.”
“Yeahyeahyeah,” Bart says while Tim grapples to the back alley below where the R-Cycle is parked.
“We’re going to go on ahead and meet you there, okay jefe?” Jaime says, and Tim just nods curtly and pulls his helmet over his head.
Soon, Bart’s voice echoes in his ear, “Okayokay, it’s possible to counteract rapid breathing by counting to ten with the patient, asking them to breathe with you, or name objects around them. Anxiety can be reduced by requesting the patient to perform a physically tiring activity such as jumping jacks or jogging in place.”
“We can’t exactly ask him to do jumping jacks or look around the street, Bart, he’d decimate twenty buildings,” Cassie says.
Bart makes a painfully unhelpful sort of noise in response and Tim says, “Get him to close his eyes first. He has to do that before you can deal with anything else.”
This of course prompts Bart to demand that Kon breathe with him followed by him counting to ten at super-speed.
Tim barely stops himself from groaning and thinks he hears Kon say something rude to Bart over the Comm. but doesn’t stop to ask. “Bart that’s not going to help. Cassie, I need you to count for him, okay?”
“Y-yeah, okay,” Cassie says and Tim thinks it’s been awhile since he’s heard her sound this shaken up. He takes a moment to force himself to breathe and then listens to Cassie ask Kon to do the same.
Seconds tick by and Tim can feel every single one of them as he speeds past stoplights and dodges cable cars, Cassie’s voice a calming metronome in his ear.
By the time she gets to seven Bart says, “He closed his eyes,” and Tim exhales so hard he fogs up his helmet a little.
When she reaches ten Cassie says, “Alright Kon, I’m going let go of you now, okay?” There’s a short silence and then, “I’ve got him up,” Cassie says. “Blue Beetle and Beast Boy just got here. We’re um, we’re going to bring him back to the Tower.”
Tim comes to a screeching halt at the corner of Market and Van Ness and says, “Yeah… Okay. I’ll meet you guys there.” He turns his bike and heads back toward the wharf.
÷÷÷÷÷÷
Tim gets there first and meets them in the foyer. Gar and Jaime are up front, looking a little bit shell shocked with Cassie and Bart following close behind and fluttering on either side of Kon who is glassy eyed and stiff which worries Tim more than anything else he’s seen so far.
On his way to Kon, Gar approaches Tim and gestures to Jaime, “We’re gonna hit the showers. I know Kon’s kinda your boy, so I figure whatever happened out there you’ve got it handled. But don’t forget we’re here if you need us, okay? Vic too.”
Tim nods and thanks him and moves towards the couches where Bart and Cassie are sitting Kon down. “Hey,” he says, taking the empty spot where Bart had been sitting before he scooted away at super speed. “You know what happened out there?” Tim asks, trying to ignore Bart who is now pressed against his side like molded putty, clutching his bicep with both hands.
Kon doesn’t answer or give any indication at all that he even heard Tim. “Kon?” Tim says and reaches up with his free arm to pull down his cowl. It doesn’t get him any results and Cassie’s panicked glances are increasing in frequency and severity with every passing second, so Tim moves his hand tentatively towards Kon’s shoulder, just to try and ground him, but before it even gets there Kon’s got his wrist in a death grip. Tim’s whole body coils up, ready for a fight, ready for Kon to lose it and go after one of them but he just holds onto Tim’s wrist. His fingers loosen a little bit. He lowers his hand back to the couch. But he doesn’t let go of Tim.
As far as reactions go, Tim thinks he can probably work with this, and considering it seems like Kon has more or less totally checked out of the building, Tim figures he’s lucky Kon didn’t accidentally crush his wrist.
“Hey,” Tim tries again. “Kon, can you hear me?”
“Yeah, what?” Kon says, and Bart flinches next to Tim. Kon doesn’t actually look at him, but his voice sounds completely relaxed, like this is just any other friendly chat. It’s disturbing to be honest.
“Do you know what happened out there?”
“What?” Kon says, and his brow furrows a little bit, but he’s still staring straight ahead, out the windows of the tower on the other side of the room overlooking Alcatraz.
“You had a panic attack,” Tim says. “Do you think you can remember what might have caused it?”
Tim watches the space between Kon’s eyebrows slowly crinkle and his mouth twitch just slightly before he takes a slow, deep breath and says, “Um, can I-,” he exhales and licks his lips. “I’d like to be alone… I think.”
When Bart and Cassie both exchange looks with Tim, but don’t actually move anywhere, Kon says, “I know I said I think, but I’m actually very sure.”
It takes a few seconds – for Bart Tim’s sure it takes hours – but they stand up. “I can’t leave until you let go, Kon,” Tim says gently, to which Kon replies by not letting go. In fact Tim thinks he might have actually tightened his grip.
On her way out of the room Cassie throws him a suspicious look but Tim doesn’t have time to react to it before she looks away distracted in her attempt to herd Bart in a direction that doesn’t involve him just circling back to Kon somehow.
As soon as Cassie and Bart are out of sight, Kon wilts, tipping over and resting his head against the back of Tim’s hand, which he has forcibly held across his knees. Tim’s not one hundred percent sure how holding onto his wrist is helping Kon, but he’s pretty sure this is an improvement from before, so he does his best to ignore Kon’s thumb gliding back and forth over his pulse point like a metronome keeping perfect time with his heartbeat. “Do you want me to call Clark?”
“Jesus,” Kon says. “No.”
“Martha?”
“No.”
“Um.” Tim thinks for a moment. “Dick?” He says, and then realizes that Dick is probably barfing his brains out right now. “Never mind. Not Dick. That’s a bad idea.”
Kon doesn’t seem to notice or care about Tim’s babbling and says in a tone of voice which indicates he doesn’t realize Tim can hear him, “This is so fucking out of control.”
“Maybe you should call your therapist?” Tim says.
Kon doesn’t react to this either but he does pull his phone out of his back pocket and stare at it for a moment like he’s trying to remember how to use it. Tim is initially horrified that Kon just carries his personal cell phone around while he’s rescuing people as Superboy but decides to save that particular lecture for later. Kon stands up and says, “I think I’m going to go home.” He squeezes Tim’s wrist before finally letting go of it.
Something is on the tip of Tim’s tongue. He doesn’t know what it is, but he can feel it teetering there on the very edge. Kon leaves the room before it has a chance to fall and Tim sits on the big couch in the middle of the Titan’s Tower and watches clouds roll over the ocean outside until Cassie and Bart come back in and then Tim gets too caught up in the whirl wind of questions to dwell on anything else.
÷÷÷÷÷÷
It feels wrong to leave the tower just to check on Kon, especially in the wake of everyone’s concern. But Tim wants to. He doesn’t know the last time he’s seen Bart this on edge, and Jaime and Cassie are both shaken. Gar and Vic keep talking to each other in low murmuring voices, and Tim wants to leave so bad but he doesn’t.
He stays the whole weekend. On Saturday in the evening, Cassie finds him in the pool. She sits on the edge of the diving board and waits for him to finish his laps. Sometimes Tim catches her making faces at him when she thinks he’s not looking and despite everything, he smiles as he dives back into the water.
When he’s about to get out she comes to sit at the edge of the pool, rolling up her sleep pants – which have little Wonder Woman symbols patterned across them – and says, “You okay?”
Tim is confounded by the question mostly because he feels like he should be the one asking her if she’s okay, but he says, “Yeah, of course,” and settles for, “How about you?”
She shrugs. “I dunno. I don’t think me and Conner are getting back together this time.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Tim says, and crosses his arms over the edge of the pool next to her.
She looks at him like she knows something he doesn’t. “I’m not saying it because I think he won’t want to. I’m saying it because I think I don’t want to.”
Tim looks down at his arms, counts the faint freckles he sees up to five and says, “Don’t be ridiculous. You love Conner. You’ve always loved him.”
Now she looks at Tim like she’s about to eat him alive and says, “I’m not the only one.” Tim feels himself melting into the pool water but Cassie keeps talking as though she hadn’t said anything at all. “That’s not the point though. We’ve always been like this, on again, off again, over and over. I love him, sure, but I’m just... tired of it. And I’m worried. Something’s really wrong with him, Tim, I’ve never seen him like this before. You don’t know what it was like before we got him to calm down.”
“I do,” Tim says before he can think about it and Cassie’s head whips down to meet his gaze. “I, um, stayed over at the farm a few months ago and he woke up in the middle of the night and blew a hole through his bedroom wall.”
Cassie’s hand comes up to cover her mouth as she mutters, “Oh my God.” Then her eyes narrow and she says, “How much do you actually know?”
Tim looks back down at the freckles on his arms. “A lot. Most of it. Maybe all of it, I’m not really sure. But I’m not – I know he doesn’t want me to tell.”
Cassie looks hurt, her lips pressed together in a tight line, eyes small and shadowed by the dim lights of the pool. “Doesn’t want you to tell me, you mean.”
“No,” Tim says. “Anybody. It’s not - ,” Suddenly, Tim isn’t sure why Kon doesn’t want Cassie to know. He should. They’ve been close for years, as many as Kon and Tim for sure. “It’s not because of you, Cassie,” he finishes, because regardless of Kon’s reasons, he knows this is true.
She huffs. “Oh, I know. I’m just jealous.” She smiles at him but it’s a sad expression and Tim is not sure at all how to handle this situation so he clears his throat and looks back at his arms. “You should tell him how you feel, Tim.” Cassie says and pulls her legs out of the pool to stand up.
When she offers it, Tim takes her hand and wonders if he should tell her that he maybe already did tell Kon.
“I don’t think he knows it,” She says, “But he’s obsessed with you.”
“We’re best friends,” Tim says by way of explanation.
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, but like… Tim…” Then she sighs and says, “Never mind. It’s your business. I just want to make sure that, whatever’s going on with Conner, you and me are still friends.”
Tim smiles at her and feels like it’s the first time he’s really smiled in weeks. “Always.”
Cassie grins. “I’d hug you but you’re soaking wet and these are my favorite pajamas, so we’ll have to settle.”
‘Settling’ is a kiss on Tim’s cheek and a gentle shove, followed by Cassie’s laughing voice saying, “Go hit the showers, Boy Wonder, you smell like a bottle of bleach.”
÷÷÷÷÷÷
On Sunday they finish tracking down the arms dealers and make plans to bust the operation next weekend. Tim has a feeling he won’t be there, but he helps them plot out their strategy anyway and then flies immediately to the Kent’s.
A nest of branches and debris are visible from the air as Tim lands. Giant panels of splintered wood reach toward the blue Kansas sky like jagged rocks at the bottom of an ocean cliff. The head of a large oak tree rests in the center of what used to be the Kent family barn, its roots, gnarled and torn, still cling to the ground from which it was ripped. The sight of it sends something cold running down Tim’s throat and he tries to swallow the feeling away as he powers down the jet’s engines after he lands.
Martha Kent is sitting in a chair on the porch of the house doing a crossword puzzle, and when she sees him she stands up and smiles as though nothing is wrong. “I wondered if you wouldn’t drop by for a visit.”
“Um,” Tim says, and jerks his thump in the direction of the wreckage behind him. “The… barn?”
“Oh,” Martha waves her hand. “Kon had a… an accident when he came home.”
Tim’s chest tightens. “Is he okay?”
“He’ll be fine,” Martha says, but Tim doesn’t miss the way she closes her eyes and inhales before she speaks. “I think he may have done it on purpose.”
“What?”
“Well, I’ve always hated that ugly tree and the barn’s been needing a good renovation for years now. I’m just glad he took his anger out on something useful. But I would be gladder if he’d had the forethought to empty the barn before he decided to demolish it.” She pats Tim on the shoulder and sits back down. “He’s in his room I think – wouldn’t tell me what happened. That boy is in a mood.”
Tim wants to stay outside a moment longer. He wants to ask Martha a question but he can’t put words to it, so he just smiles and heads inside, the screen door smacking its frame behind him.
The door to Kon’s room is open, which surprises Tim, but he takes it as an invitation to enter and makes sure to close it behind him.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Kon says from his bed. He’s staring at his ceiling, arms resting against his stomach, knees bent. If he hadn’t just spoken Tim would have wondered if Kon even knew he was there.
Tim opens his mouth but Kon cuts him off.
“What happened at the tower or the barn,” he clarifies. “None of it.”
Tim closes his mouth and finds that he needs to sit down, so he does, sinking to the floor of Kon’s bedroom with his back against the door. “Do you want me to go?” he asks.
“I don’t care,” Is Kon’s response which somehow is worse than any other answer Tim could have imagined from him.
Tim settles for crossing his arms over his knees and resting his chin against them. He lets his eyes wander the room. It’s Kon’s signature mess, just tidy enough to be livable, but significantly cluttered – dirty clothes falling over the edge of his hamper, various combs, deodorant, and after shave clustered onto one half of his dresser, with CD’s, movies, and a pile of stuff that can be described only as junk occupying the other half. Across from the end of Kon’s bed is the hole he blew in the wall, noticeable now only because of the slightly off shade blue paint that covers the new plaster. He tries not to look at Kon.
Tim doesn’t say anything and Kon doesn’t say anything, but Tim stays until the light in Kon’s bedroom turns orange and pink from the setting sun and then he stands up and says, “You’ll call if you need me?”
“Yeah,” Kon says, and Tim leaves.
÷÷÷÷÷÷
Kon doesn’t call.
It has been three weeks.
Frankly speaking, Tim is losing his sense of practical reality. He’s very familiar with the feeling because he’s pretty sure he lived with it for the entire year during which Kon was dead, and probably off and on the rest of his life, but right now it’s drowning him. Namely because Tim doesn’t think he has any right to feel this way when Kon is clearly the one fighting through a crisis right now.
Even so, Tim’s spent pretty much every minute of the last week and a half with his laptop, laying in his bed, or across his couch, or on his kitchen floor, watching cooking shows on Netflix (because Stephanie stole his TV and he hasn’t been able to find the motivation to buy a new one) and ordering delivery on the rare occasions that he becomes hungry enough to drag himself to the phone or open a new tab in his web browser. He gets up for patrol and for work, but he doesn’t think he’s sparred once since he left the Tower, and he certainly hasn’t spoken to anyone.
It stands to reason then that when somebody knocks on the door of his apartment, Tim’s first thought is, I didn’t order anything, followed quickly by, I didn’t buzz anyone up, and finally ending in, Oh no.
“Open the door bird brain!”
It’s Stephanie.
Tim only realizes he has said this out loud when Stephanie says, “You bet your ass it’s Stephanie, now get off the couch and open the door!”
“I’m not on the couch!” Tim yells back as he drags himself pathetically off the couch.
“You look disgusting,” Stephanie says after Tim opens the door. “It’s worse than I thought.”
Tim frowns at her. “I look fine.” He probably doesn’t, though, and he’s sure he smells because he just couldn’t muster the energy to shower after patrol this morning. He keeps his distance from her as she walks through the door.
“Dick said you hadn’t been returning his calls but I didn’t think you’d let yourself go this far.” Stephanie surveys his apartment which is, admittedly, a wreck. “Yikes, Tim.”
“I’ve been busy,” Tim says. “Dick’s been calling?”
Stephanie barely stifles her laugh. “Oh yeah.”
“Hey,” Tim says, “About… with Jason. I really am sorr-,” Stephanie cuts him off by roughly pushing his head away from her and snorting.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. After knowing you for this many years, I’m familiar with your psychotic tendencies. I wouldn’t still be friends with you if I couldn’t handle it. Just don’t do it again.”
Because he’s not sure what to say in response, Tim just smiles at her.
“I’m not here to talk about that, though,” Stephanie says and walks past him to the coffee table in his living room which is barely visible beneath his piles of takeout boxes. “You’re in a funk.”
His smile drops. “I’m not in a funk.”
“You’re depressed,” She says, and pulls a giant garbage bag from, apparently nowhere.
“I’m not depressed.”
Stephanie stops shoving his trash into the bag to look at him skeptically. “I heard about what happened at the tower,” She says and continues her work.
Tim sighs.
“Look,” she moves onto the kitchen. “Whatever’s going on with Superboy, it’s obviously none of my business – even if I am literally dying to know about it. But it’s also clearly messing you up.” She huffs and sets the bag down on Tim’s bar counter. “You don’t live in a vacuum, Tim.”
Tim looks at the floor and backs up a few feet to sit on the arm of his couch.
“Stop that,” Stephanie says. “Get your butt up and go take a shower. Jason’s on his way over with a cake.”
“Jason,” Tim says the name like a statement and has to think for a minute before he remembers that Jason is not someone he wants in his apartment. “Don’t let him in here.”
The look Stephanie gives him over her shoulder is sharper than one of Damian’s katana, though the pink rubber gloves on her hands covered in soap suds do dull the severity of it. “He’s trying to make amends. He wants to be on good terms with you, Tim. He’s bringing you a cake.” This last part she says in the same tone of voice someone might use to describe a heroic martyr.
Tim does not understand and says, “He tried to kill me two times.”
“So did Damian,” Stephanie says and Tim thinks this makes even less sense than her previous argument.
“Yeah, and I wouldn’t want him in my apartment either.”
“Well that’s too bad because he’s coming too,” Stephanie drops a plate haphazardly into Tim’s drying rack. “Probably.”
“Why?” Tim asks, desperately trying to think of what he has done in recent history to deserve this kind of betrayal. He briefly considers that Stephanie hasn’t actually forgiven him and that this is some horrific, cold blooded pay back, but it’s not Stephanie’s style. If she were going to serve it to him, she’d want him to know it was happening.
“Just don’t worry about it and go take your shower. If the cake gets here before you’re clean I’m worried the rancid smell of your disgusting body will sour it.”
“Thanks,” Tim says flatly and decides that if Jason and Damian really are about to show up on his doorstep for whatever nightmarish reason Stephanie has planned, he doesn’t want them to know how capable he is of living in filth. Wordlessly, Tim climbs the stairs of his loft and tries to pretend he hasn’t been wallowing in self-pity for the last three weeks.
÷÷÷÷÷÷
When he comes downstairs, and to his great dismay, Jason is already inside his apartment. He’s leaning his hip against the counter next to Stephanie and saying something that’s making her laugh. It takes an enormous strength of will for Tim to ignore them, but he does and walks over to the island where a small cake box has been placed.
“Hey, you’re welcome for that by the way,” Jason says across the kitchen. “Shit wasn’t cheap.”
“Generally when you do something nice for someone, you don’t demand that they thank you for it afterwards.” Tim lifts the lid off the box and reads the pink cursive lettering on the cake in a daze.
Happy Birthday
Replacement
Above the words is a small toy crowbar which was clearly not part of the original decoration and had been shoved into the cake post purchase. Tim’s first thought is, it’s not my birthday. His second thought is, is it my birthday?
Stephanie gasps and moves across the kitchen to rip the crowbar out of Tim’s cake. “Jason!” She looks at it for a moment before sticking the frosting end in her mouth and spinning around. “We discussed this!” With a pop, she pulls the crowbar from her lips.
“Yeah,” Jason says. “We discussed that it was a great idea.”
“You’re delusional,” She turns to Tim. “Sorry, he’s not all the way house trained yet.”
“Excuse you,” Jason crosses his arms but makes no effort to follow through with a legitimate rebuttal, possibly because he never had one in mind, or possibly because Dick Grayson chooses that moment to burst through Tim’s apartment door (which Stephanie apparently left unlocked while Tim was in the shower) with a mountain of presents and Damian trailing behind him like a dog being dragged to the vet at the end of a very short leash.
“Sorry we’re late!” He says and incredibly manages to traverse the length of Tim’s apartment with every gift carefully balanced inside the tender care of his embrace until he drops them all unceremoniously on Tim’s couch. “Had to check on a John Doe at the morgue, Gordon thinks Zsasz might be resurfacing.”
“Is he?” Tim asks and regrets it immediately when Dick whirls around and looks at him as though Tim is the eighth wonder of the world.
“Tim?” Dick says dramatically. Behind him, Damian groans in such a way as to indicate that Dick’s annoyance with Tim has become a physically tangible aggravation in Damian’s recent life. If nothing else, Tim takes comfort in this.
“Hey, Dick,” Tim says and tries so hard to make his voice sound normal.
“Hey,” Dick says back in a mockingly similar tone. “Nice to see you. Nice to know you’re out here. Alive. Not dead. Capable of dialing a phone.”
“Listen-,”
Dick cuts Tim off with a drastic hand gesture. “No, no,” He says and makes his way toward the kitchen. Damian follows him like a shade demon. “Right now we are celebrating.” This statement is followed by a stern finger point and Dick says, “Later I am going to scold you about ignoring your big brother’s phone calls and worrying him to death.”
Damian snorts and Tim says, “Okay.”
÷÷÷÷÷÷
Eventually, Tim manages to catch a glance at the calendar on his phone to confirm that today is, in fact, his birthday, and while forgetting his own birthday isn’t necessarily out of character for Tim, forgetting the date of the month is. It dawns on Tim that Stephanie may have been right. He resolves not to let her know this.
The party progresses as one would imagine. Stephanie tries and fails to herd Jason and Dick away from potentially disastrous conversational topics at the same time that Damian tries and succeeds to drive them toward assuredly disastrous conversational topics. At a certain point, Damian calls Stephanie a ‘fat whore’ and Jason rounds on him like a frothing animal. Then he rounds on Dick for ‘failing his duty as Damian’s guardian by not beating the shit out of him for saying bullshit like this’.
Tim watches the entire exchange from a barstool at his island with a forkful of cake in his mouth. Next to him, Stephanie is smiling dreamily at Jason who is giving Dick and Damian a full blown academic lecture on body shaming and women’s suffrage. Tim hates that look on her face, but watching Jason in this particular light, he also sort of gets it, and as soon as he thinks this he has to stand up and leave the room for his own sanity.
After Tim takes refuge in his office – which is for all intents and purposes a show room for normal people who visit his apartment – Dick comes to find him.
“How was the seminar?” Tim asks before Dick can say anything that might lead them in the direction of a feelings heavy conversation.
Dick sits down in the less comfortable of Tim’s two office chairs (mostly because Tim himself is occupying the more comfortable). “Educational,” he says. “And very aggressive.” A moment passes and Tim curses himself for not filling it with words when Dick says, “I heard about what happened at the tower. Is Kon okay?”
When Tim laughs he knows he sounds sort of crazy so he shuts his mouth and swallows and says, “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well.” Tim huffs and reclines in his chair. “I went to the farm that Sunday and… I don’t know, I don’t – he like… demolished the barn with an oak tree?”
“He what?”
“Yeah,” Tim says, glancing through the blinds of his office window at the perpetually dark and wet streets of Gotham, glowing in the light of orange streetlamps.
“On purpose?”
“Martha thinks so. But, in a good way. I guess she really wanted to remodel the barn – anyway, he didn’t want to talk to me at all when I went to see him. I mean, I don’t know, he just seemed like… not Kon.”
Dick is silent and Tim feels like he’s waiting to hear more – an oft used tactic of Dick’s to force those around him into bearing their hearts so that they might escape his awkward silence. Tim’s a sucker for it every time.
“It’s just that, before when he’s gone off the rails like this he’s still been… himself somehow? But this time it was like he just disappeared and left his body behind and I guess it – it didn’t really hit me until then that this is – that he’s really messed up.”
“Hmm.” Dick leans forward in his chair and it squeaks on its base. “Have you talked to him since then?”
“No,” Tim says. “He said he’d call if he needed me but he hasn’t.”
“Well, no news is good news. You can’t be his crutch, Tim. If something serious happened Clark would let you know.”
“Yeah, but-,”
“If Conner needs you, he will call. But maybe what he needs right now isn’t you, maybe it’s to be alone for a little while.”
“I know that,” Tim says and hates how petulant he sounds. “I just -,”
“Wish you could do more to help,” Dick finishes for him and walks the desk chair closer to Tim like a child so that he can put his hand on Tim’s shoulder. “I know. So does Conner. You’re a good friend, Tim. Conner will be okay, and so will you. Just give it time.”
Tim exhales and somewhat guiltily leans into Dick’s touch. For a minute, he lets himself feel like a kid again and then says, “Thanks Dick.”
The smile Tim gets in return is one of Dick’s most classic and sincere Nightwing™ smiles. As usual, Tim feels winded after witnessing it. “Any time, favorite little brother of mine,” Dick says. “When are you coming over for movie night by the way? You missed the last one.”
“Is Damian still living with you?” Tim asks.
“Of course.”
“Never,” Tim says, and Dick makes a frustrated noise.
“Bring Conner.”
“Yeah, sure,” Tim rolls his eyes. “Because what Kon needs right now is prolonged exposure to the son of the Devil trapped inside the body of a child.”
“I know you’re talking about Damian, Tim, and that’s very insensitive.” Dick seems to be giving Tim a look of scolding, but he also seems to be fighting off laughter. “I’m serious. Two weeks from tomorrow. The fifth. Bring Conner.”
“Sure, Dick.” Tim says.
“I’m serious!” Dick says.
“Okay.”
Dick to stand up in a fit of exasperation and say, “You’re impossible! It’s like fighting with Bruce!” he throws Tim one last smile before he leaves the room.
When Dick is gone, Tim pulls out his phone. It’s stupid, but he texts Kon.
Clone Boy
Today 8:47 AM
Dick invited you to movie night on the 5th if you want to come.
I think we’re watching Tremors.
Kon doesn’t reply and Tim manages to be okay with it.