Big Sky Country

Dropping in on Bats unannounced is dangerous, but it’s also the most likely way to actually catch them off-duty.

Kon is fully prepared to find Tim is out, or still sleeping. It’s not like it took him all that long to fly here, he can always just go home again if it’s a bad time.

What he isn’t expecting is to find Tim sitting at the actor’s vanity he has in his bedroom, wearing a dark red dress and applying make-up.

He knows Tim used to go undercover in drag sometimes when he was younger, because he could pass as an older girl than he could guy and sometimes that was important. Kon had never actually met Caroline, but Tim hadn’t seemed embarrassed or like he minded when Kon asked questions. And Kon had had a lot of questions.

It isn’t so much the drag thing, although that is admittedly interesting. It’s more that he can’t begin to understand the way Tim can just disappear behind a character the way he does.

But that had been years ago, when Tim was still a kid. This is different.

He knocks on the window, and the startled glance, the deliberate way he sets down the little brush, are Tim-but-not-Tim in a way Kon finds vaguely disquieting.

It’s definitely Tim who opens the window to let him in though, because no one else in the whole world frowns quite like that.

“Nice threads,” he says, in lieu of a greeting, when Tim has closed the window behind him. “What’s the occasion?”

“Just practising,” Tim says, with a shrug. His hair is longer than it had been the last time Kon saw him, long enough that you can see that there’s a bit of a wave to it but not long enough to actually tie back, and he’s wearing a funky little black wire headband to hold it out of his face. “I’m better at the prosthetics stuff than just normal make-up, but this is more useful.”

“What about the dress?”

Self-conscious for the first time, Tim smoothes a hand down the front of the dress. He’s not wearing any kind of false breasts, but the fabric drapes over his pecs in a way that makes it hard to tell that at first glance. “I like this dress, and it seemed to go with the look.”

“It’s pretty,” Kon agrees. “It would be nice in green.” It’s not a Robin red, too dark, and Kon’s never quite stopped expecting to see him in Robin colours.

“Green doesn’t suit me,” Tim says. “But my mom always looked very good in Burgundy.”

“Do you look like her, then?”

“Increasingly, though her hair wasn’t black. I’m always a little worried, when I do my make-up, that I’m going to look into the mirror and see her looking back.”

“Maybe you should wear some different colours?”

Tim huffs one of those tiny exhales he thinks is a real laugh. “I also look good in cream or white, but the only time I wore them around Bruce, he looked like he’d seen a ghost. It was Alfred who showed me the photos of Bruce’s mother as a young woman. She and my mom looked quite alike, and with the black hair and the right padding, I could be her transgender sister.”

He hadn’t been going to ask - talking to Tim these days is always a complicated dance of asking enough to show he cares without asking so much that Tim feels cornered - but it was Tim who brought it up, which means it’s fair game. “Are you? Trans, I mean?”

Tim sighs, and retakes his - her? - seat at the vanity, leaving Kon to wheel over the big leather chair from the desk.

“Not so long ago, I’d have responded to that by distracting you and climbing out of the nearest window when you weren’t looking. Even if we were on the top floor of the Tower at the time. The short answer is no. The long answer is that gender as a whole is a somewhat fraught subject. I am, for want of a better term, biologically male. I was raised in a way that meant I absorbed more masculinity than femininity. But I have never felt any particular allegiance to maleness as an identity, and on some days it’s downright uncomfortable. I think it has more to do with how I think about identity than how I think about gender, but I also think it’s likely that many trans people would tell me that that doesn’t matter.”

“And what do you think about that?”

“I’m always torn between feeling like I have more than enough complications in my life as it is without actually admitting to not being cisgender, and being relieved that at least one of the labels which applies to me doesn’t appear in the DSM. Anymore, at least.

“There’s also a part of me which worries… Being trans is not an illness, not something that is caused. It’s a part of who someone is. But I can trace clear and unambiguous lines between emotional instability in my childhood and how I think about gender. In some ways, I think I have more in common with people in dissociative identity disorder systems which include both male and female alters than I do with mentally healthy trans people.  If I were to be more open, would I be contributing to the body of so-called evidence used by bigots to justify their transphobia?”

“I don’t know, dude. You can’t take responsibility for other people’s fuck-ups. If people want to be dicks they’ll do it, whether they have evidence or not. You’ve gotta do what makes you happy.”

Tim hums a low noise of agreement, and turns back to the mirror. “I suppose superheroics are on my side there. Out doesn’t need to mean out, when you have a secret identity to work with.”

“You could totally rock the batgirl suit,” Kon tells him. Her? Them? “Wait, what pronouns should I be using for you?”

“I haven’t given it much thought, honestly.”

“Well, it’s not like your answer is legally binding. You can totally just tell me different later, or the next time you see me, if you change your mind.”

“Ah, she, then. Since it matches my outfit.”

“Cool.” He sits in silence for a few minutes, watching Tim do something with a big fluffy-looking brush that seems to change the contours of her face as Kon watches. “You’re really good at that.”

Tim isn’t wearing lipstick, but he can already guess from the slightly pouting smile he gets in return that it’s going to be red when she finally gets to it. “Hey, how much of this is you?”

“I am both the mask and the wearer,” Tim says, and then laughs. “Sorry. About 70%, I think. Maybe a bit less.”

“Who’s the other 30%? Do I get to meet her?”

She meets his eyes in the vanity mirror, looking up at him through her eyelashes in a distinctly un-Tim-like way. “How could I possibly refuse a face like that?”

He’s absolutely supposed to flirt back, and something about the hot little smile she’s giving him makes it easy. “You got a name, beautiful?”

“My friends call me Scarlet.”

“And what about your enemies?”

“What makes you think I have any?”

“That smile, for one.”

“I’m not sure that was a compliment.”

“Yes, you are. No one looks that much like they’d happily cut a man’s balls off for disrespecting them without meaning to.”

The smile melts into a very Tim-like grin, and his shoulders lose some of Scarlet’s careful poise. “Would you rather I looked like I let men push me around? I’ve still got Caroline’s lab coat around here somewhere. I might even still fit in it.”

“I’d rather just talk to you,” Kon says, which might be too much honesty all in one go for Tim to cope with, but he’s never been good at the kind of verbal games Tim loves. They remind him a little too strongly of Lex, for one thing. “Hey, have you ever met Lex Luthor? Officially, I mean?”

“Once or twice. He hates Gotham, but even a billionaire has to play nice sometimes. He’s been to a couple of Bruce’s more ostentatious fundraisers. Before Damian became the acknowledged heir, that meant I had to at least say hello.”

“What did you think of him?”

“You mean apart from what I already knew?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know you already knew he was an evil bastard, but meeting him in civilian street has got to be different, right?” Kon feels like he knows next to nothing about being a civilian, even after the years he’s spent with Ma and Pa. Connor Kent is the mask, the constructed identity. Superboy is who he was born to be. He suspects Tim feels something similar, but she had at least had a civilian life first, and weird as it is to think about, she’s spent more of her life out of the tights than in them.

“I thought his pathology was depressingly familiar, but he at least managed  to be interesting about it. Monomaniacs are ten a penny when you’re dealing with the super-rich, but very few of them are actually as clever as they think they are.

“I also think if we could somehow not only get him to become close, but to remain close, to someone prepared to give him a few unpleasant home truths, he could become a force for genuine good in the world. His problem is less any inherent evil, I think, than it is the fact that it’s been far far too long since anyone said no to him. Possibly it’s never happened, outside of his father, and having read Bruce’s notes on the man… I won’t say I’m glad Lex had him murdered, but I will say that I think he would have done even more harm than Lex has, given ready access to supervillains.”

Kon digests that, and the nice thing about Tim is that she lets him do it without hurrying him. “Do you believe in evil?”

“No, although sometimes I wish I did.”

“Why?”

“Because I think it would be easier to be sure of my own morality if I knew there were objective standards to measure against.”

That is the most Tim thing he’s ever heard Tim say, which is kind of impressive. “What about, like, the Joker? Is he evil?”

“I don’t think it’s possible to judge. We don’t know his past, and when questioned about his motivations and thought patterns he’s never given the same answer twice. A comprehensive psychological profile is impossible with so little data to go on, no matter what the writers of cop shows would like us to believe. Ultimately though, I don’t think it matters very much. He presents a clear and present danger to everyone he encounters. I think that is significantly more important than his inherent morality.”

They’ve talked about any number of things over the years they’ve known one another, but never the death penalty. It’s something of a taboo in superhero circles. If you want to have Batman and the Flash sitting at the same table as Wonder Woman or Green Arrow, there have to be some points of ‘agree to disagree’ or nothing would ever get done.

Once upon a time Kon would have said he knew with absolute certainty where Tim stood on that, but that was before Batman died, and Kon died, and Bart, and all the other things that went into making Red Robin sharper and harder than original flavour Robin had ever been. Now, he’s not so sure.

“Do you think he should be allowed to keep living then? If you don’t care whether he’s sane or not, and you know he’s a danger, do you think he should be executed?”

There’s this thing Tim does sometimes, when she feels like she’s been backed into a corner, where her expression just closes off. It’s a bit like watching Clark turn into Superman, the way all the bits of himself that aren’t good and pure and suitable for the general public have to be put away to keep from frightening people, except 100 times creepier because Superman might be the bland customer-service version of Clark but he still has emotions. When Tim closes off she looks like an animated shop-dummy. “Bats don’t kill.”

Except they do, because Tim and Nightwing have both been talking about Red Hood like he’s one of the family again, and Kon knows some of the shit that guy’s done, and the stuck up little brat who replaced Tim as Robin carries a fucking sword. But he has a feeling if he points any of that out, he might as well just end this visit now.

“What does Scarlet think?” he asks instead, hoping to coax Tim out without just changing the subject completely.

The change in posture is so subtle he wouldn’t have noticed it if he wasn’t watching for it. “I think a lot of people would be alive today if the GCPD could get over their innate reaction to seeing skin that white and just shoot the man,” Scarlet says, with a shrug. “Or maybe that girlfriend of his could do it. A bit of catharsis would probably do her the world of good.”

“What about Red Hood?”

“Too much trauma. Too personal. And I am rather invested in him keeping at least some of his marbles.”

“Because he’s your brother?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I’ve been reliably informed I have only child written all over me.”

“Then why are you… wait. Tim, is this a bit or are you…”

Scarlet gives him a look like he’s deeply disappointed her. “Tim can’t come to the phone right now.”

“Okay, then you tell me. Does Tim fancy her brother?”

“Which one? Oh, don’t pull that face at me. You have seen Nightwing. Yes, she’s interested in Red Hood. Yes it’s a little incestuous but they weren’t raised together and they don’t share blood. Given how this community likes to raise their children, I’d say it was considerably less incestuous than your average Titan romance, although admittedly it would make working out who’s groom’s side and who’s bride’s at the wedding somewhat complicated.”

“If it’s so fine and normal, why can’t Tim tell me about it herself?”

Scarlet sighs like he’s being terribly stupid, and relaxes into Tim. Or, not relaxes exactly because Tim never looks relaxed and right now she looks downright tense. But she holds her tension in different places than Scarlet does, enough that the change is immediately obvious to someone who knows her well. “Because I suspected you’d be horrified, and because I recently learned that my interest may be returned, which I am finding somewhat overwhelming.”

She’s talking in that stiff formal way she falls back on when she’s nervous about something. It makes her sound like a kid trying to sound like a grown-up, and from what Kon knows of her childhood, that’s probably exactly where it came from.

“Seriously? Wow, guess I’d better start getting used to the idea, huh.”

A little twitch of the lips, too sardonic to be a proper smile but comforting for its long familiarity all the same. Tim was never good at smiling like she was happy, even when they were just kids. “If you manage it, you can tell me how. Preferably before next week.”

“Wait, you have a date?!”

“Ah, not exactly? Or, well, maybe. It really depends on Midnighter.”

Kon’s never met the Midnighter, but he knows the name. He’s a meta, scary powerful and on the murder happy side of vigilante, but he mostly keeps to himself and doesn’t get involved in the community, so the community leaves him alone in return. “What’s he got to do with it?”

“He’s offered to… well, plead my case I suppose. He came to Gotham for a lead, and I was dispatched to keep an eye on him. He more or less interviewed me for the position of Red Hood’s boyfriend, and I think I passed.”

“What’s his skin in the game?”

“He and Hood hooked up a few weeks ago. Apparently that was enough to make him protective. I think he’s lonely, honestly. He and Apollo split up, and I know he’s hooked up with Nightwing at least once since but that wasn’t anything serious. But whatever happened with Hood was serious enough that he gave me the shovel talk.”

“Shouldn’t it be Batman doing that?”

Tim shudders. “I’m hoping if anything comes of M’s offer, Bruce will find the whole thing too uncomfortable and just never acknowledge it. The alternatives don’t bear thinking about.”

“If Bruce scares you, what about Alfie?”

She blanches. “I can’t believe you would say that to me. I thought we were supposed to be friends.”

“You’re going to have to deal with it eventually, if you’re serious about this. You are serious, right?”

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told Midnighter. Hood’s the kind of man anyone would be serious about.”

Ouch. Kon had kind of been hoping… But it doesn’t matter. Tim badly needs some happiness in her life, and if Red Hood can give it to her, Kon’s not going to stand in their way. “He must be a hell of a guy.”

Tim meets his eyes in the mirror for a moment, and then looks away again. “He is. He reminds me of you, actually.”

Double ouch. “Tim…”

She waves a hand dismissively, and he can’t work out who’s gesture it is. “Sorry, sorry. Forget I said anything.”

“Forget that my best friend just told me I remind her of the brother she’s planning to bang?”

He gets a moment of Tim, of the Tim who lives under the others, maybe, the one who pulls the strings on all the different masks, eyes wide with something that almost looks like fear, and then it vanishes behind Scarlett’s coy smile. “When you put it like that, it sounds positively scandalous.”

“I’m not sure I can think of a way to put it that’s any better.” The words come out harsh and bitter, and as soon as he’s said them he wants to take them back. He’s been so careful, he’s tiptoed around Tim’s issues so carefully, and all that will have been for nothing.

Except apparently the divide between mask and wearer is deeper than he thought, deeper than he’s entirely comfortable with if he’s honest, because there’s no clamming up, no uncomfortable silence, just an amused little chuckle from Scarlett.

“You almost sound as though you’re jealous.”

He doesn’t know if it’s relief or bravado or sheer stubborn stupidity that makes him say, “And so what if I am?”

“I’d say you were a fool for not saying something sooner.”

“She had a girlfriend.”

It’s a good thing he likes intimidating women, or the look of incredulity Scarlett is giving him would have sent him running with his tail between his legs. She looks like she can’t begin to imagine how anyone could be so dense. “What on earth makes you think Tim’s monogamous?”

“...The monogamy?”

“If you’re going to make judgements based on whether anyone using this face is prepared to be open and honest, never mind make the first move, you’re going to be wildly misinformed.”

“Harsh.”

“Yes, well, being a character Tim plays gives me certain prejudices.” She sighs. “You’re thinking of me as a different person, aren’t you?”

“It’s hard not to.”

“Yes, I suppose it is. I’m not an alter, I’m the embodiment of Tim’s refusal to actually think about why she dislikes Catwoman.”

“And she created a whole character for that? Have you thought about writing novels?”

“Oh, they’d be dreadfully dull.” She smiles, and bleeds back into Tim. “I’m only imaginative in certain very specific ways, and I’m far too interested in the actual mechanics of deduction to do any of the hand-waving necessary to make a story flow. Bruce, on the other hand, should probably have been a poet. Did you know Clark’s eyes are specifically cornflower blue?”

“Wait, are the two of them actually…?”

“I’ve never asked the question, and I don’t intend to.”

“What colour are my eyes then?”

“You already know you have Clark’s eyes.”

“Yeah, but I want to know what you would call them, not Bruce.”

“Give me five minutes with my computer and I could probably tell you the exact hex code. I’m not good with poetry.”

Kon’s pushing, pushing harder than he’s ever dared, but for the first time he thinks there’s a chance pushing might actually get a result, and not just leave Tim blank-eyed and closed off. “I still want to know.”

“They’re…” She tips her face to the ceiling, and it looks like she’s thinking hard but Kon knows her well enough to know it’s mostly just a way to avoid looking directly at him. “Big, like the sky is in the midwest. Open. They look the way people who aren’t me feel when they stand in a field of wheat and feel the warm wind on their face. The way movies make that look. That’s the colour.”

“People who aren’t you?”

“You know how I feel about not-cities.”

“Agoraphobe.”

“Oh, absolutely. Being able to see more than a few square inches of sky brings me out in hives. Skyscrapers are extremely necessary for my basic functioning.” She looks down at her hands, and then, very deliberately, meets his eyes in the mirror. “You’re all the outdoors I need.”

Fucking hell. Kon feels like his heart is about to beat right out of his chest. “If I try to kiss you, are you going to punch me?”

No matter what happens next, good or bad, Kon thinks this is the moment that will stay with him. Watching all the pretense and poise and second-guessing slide off Tim like she’s shedding a coat, leaving someone young and wide-eyed and real. Someone’s who’s right here in this moment with him, just as scared and hopeful as he is.

If he wasn’t about to kiss the person he’s been at least half in love with since he was technically three years old, he’d think it was interesting the way Tim moves as she stands up, an unselfconscious fluidity to her movements that’s usually only there when she’s fighting for her life, but he’s too focussed on her eyes, her lips, the way she reaches for him, the way her hand feels, warm and strong and rough with callouses, against his own when he stands up to join her.

The kiss is slow and sweet, tender in a way that makes Kon’s heart skip a beat. He brings a hand up to Tim’s face but doesn’t actually touch, wary of ruining her makeup, and he can feel the warmth of her blush when she winds her arms around his neck.

She makes a soft noise when they part, something low and pleased and really fucking hot, and Kon feels a little bit like he might be dreaming.

“This is real, right? I feel like I should be pinching myself.”

“If you want me to hurt you, you only need to ask.”

“Jesus Christ, you can’t just say stuff like that!”

“No, but I can,” Scarlett says, with a grin that looks like it ought to belong to a shark. A shark that’s feeling both mean and horny, if such a thing is possible. “It’s practically what I’m for .”

“And I am absolutely down for exploring everything that that could possibly mean, but maybe not right this moment. I’d like to at least get to kiss Tim more than once before we roll right into the kinky roleplay.”

“I don’t think I’m very good at doing this as myself,” Tim admits. “People have been telling me to just be myself since junior high, and I never had the guts to admit I had no idea what they meant.”

Kon strokes a strand of hair that has escaped the headband back from her face. “When I was a kid I used to imagine that your eyes were just white all the way across, like the lenses on your mask.”

“I’m not entirely sure you were wrong. Those weekends with Young Justice… I think that was the closest I’ve ever felt to normal. I felt like a real person when I was wearing that domino.”

“You are a real person.”

“I know. It just doesn’t always feel like it. I’m doing my best not to encourage more unhealthy thought patterns than are absolutely necessary, but it would be so much easier if I could just give in to the urge to divide myself into neat little labelled boxes. I could make myself nametags, and people would stop expecting me to always be the same person every time I talked to them.”

“They don’t though. Not the people who love you. Some days I want to turn you upside down like a magic 8 ball, but that’s not the same thing.”

“Gender outlook not good, ask again later,” Tim suggests, making Kon snort with unexpected laughter.

“You should put that on a shirt. What I mean is…” he pauses, trying to organise his thoughts into something coherent. “Sometimes I wish I spoke better Tim, but I never wish you spoke Kon instead, if that makes sense. I want to be better at understanding you, but I don’t want you to be easier to understand. I want you to be you .”

“I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” Tim has to stand on tiptoes to initiate a kiss, which is adorable, and Kon immediately promises himself that he’s going to get her to do it as often as possible.

The kiss is brief, chaste, and when he leans in to deepen it, Tim stops him with a finger to his lips. “Wait.”

She pulls out of Kon’s arms, and unzips the back of her dress, pushing it off her shoulders and allowing it to pool around her feet, leaving her clad only in a pair of plain black panties that don’t look as though they could possibly have room for her junk in them. In fact if it hadn’t been for the communal showers at the Tower (he’s never been sure whether they’re proof that Nightwing and Starfire should never be allowed to design secret bases - or that they should be put in charge of redesigning the Watchtower immediately) he wouldn’t have known there even was junk to contain.

Tim notices him looking, of course, and grins, bright and mischievous. “The conversation where Bruce told me I was forbidden from wearing a gaff more than once a week and still operating with his sanction was exactly as awkward as you’d expect.”

“Aren’t they uncomfortable?”

“Only physically.”

“If you want to take them off… I mean if you want to put on something more comfortable, not… Why did you strip?”

“Because I want to be only myself right now, as much as I can be, and clothes maketh the man.”

“Or woman.”

“Precisely.” She stretches, arching her back and pushing up onto her toes for a moment, and then rolls her shoulders. “I think I would like you to go back to using male pronouns for me.”

“Are you sure?”

“It was… interesting. Validating. Warming. But your Rob was always more male than anything else, and I’m feeling nostalgic.”

“Is this what you meant? About identity not gender?”

“More or less. Do you mind?”

“No. It’s all you, afterall.” A little bit of the ever present tension leaves Tim’s shoulders, and he realises that at least some of Tim’s confidence had been an act. “You know none of the rest of YJ wouldn’t care either, right?” He can’t speak for the Titans, or the Bats, there’s too many of them he doesn’t know well, but YJ he knows he can speak for without hesitation. “I mean, I don’t know if Cassie would really get it, she pretty much only ever wants to be herself, but it wouldn’t change how she feels about you.”

“And Bart?”

“Bart would still have thought you were the best thing since sliced bread if you decided to quit heroing to be an accountant. You know that.”

Tim hums a little noise of agreement, which turns into a sigh halfway through. “I miss him.”

“Yeah, me too. Every day.” He debates about actually saying what he’s thinking, but if anyone’s going to understand, it’s Tim. “Feels weird to be doing this without him.”

“I’ve definitely had that fantasy.”

Kon laughs, because it’s that or cry, and he doesn’t want to ruin the moment completely. “I knew you weren’t all crazy. You know if he’s looking down on us right now, he’s yelling at us to stop standing around being sad when we could be making out.”

Tim stares at him blankly for a minute, and then blinks, like he’s waking up from a dream. “Sorry, I think it’s just hit me that that’s a thing we can do now.”

“I’ll do you one better. It’s a thing we should do now.”

“I’m not going to argue with that.”

“Do you… want to put some clothes on first?”

Tim glances down at himself as though he’d honestly forgotten he was wearing nothing but his underwear. It’s one of those little things that has always stuck out to Kon as discordant about Bats, that they’re all obsessive about secrecy while also being used to locker-room showers and constant surveillance. Too much privacy and none at all, all at once. “I can if it would make you more comfortable.”

“No, it’s fine, I just thought you might want to.”

“I’m trying to be as honest as I can. All of those-” his gesture takes in both the wardrobes in the room, the normal one and the locked one he uses for uniforms and disguises “-are costumes, to at least some degree.”

“And clothes maketh the man.” The small smile he gets in response feels like a reward, like he’s passed a test in speaking Tim. “I’m absolutely not going to complain if you want to be naked around me.”

“Not all the time. We have five years of fantasies to work through, and some of them absolutely require costumes. But for now… just this.”

It takes Kon a minute to force his brain back online because, well, everything Tim just said, but when he does, a thought occurs to him. “Hey, is the make-up part of the gender vibe you’ve got going on right now, or does it belong to Scarlet?”

Tim considers that, and then shrugs. “Mostly Scarlet.”

“Can I take it off you?”

“If you like.”

“It’s not that I don’t like it,” Kon clarifies, as Tim reaches for a packet of wipes. “I do, it’s just… it changes your face a lot, and I wanted to just see you, you know?”

“I know.”

Of course he does. He probably understands better than anyone in the world.

Kon guides Tim back to the vanity stool, and he retakes his seat, but facing Kon this time.

Kon seats himself cross-legged on the floor, and then mentally releases the tethers holding him to the earth so he floats up until they’re eye to eye.

The wipes smell pleasant in an artificial sort of way, and feel faintly oily against his fingers. He starts with Tim’s cheeks, wiping away the carefully constructed artificial shadows that had softened his cheekbones.

He’d done something to soften his jaw as well, and the base colour had been blended down into his neck, the way Kon remembers Cissie teaching Cassie to do when they were kids.

Removing the mascara and eye shadow feels strangely intimate, the feel of Tim’s eye moving beneath the closed lid a reminder of how easily Kon could hurt him, how much trust he’s showing by allowing this.

Like all the Bats, his face is smooth and free from scars. Batman and Nightwing have both had to use the tech Kon prefers not to think about in Clark’s fortress to keep it that way, but Tim never has. Logically, Kon knows that’s just because they’ve been on the street longer, but he can’t help the bit of him that believes that it’s really because his Bat is just better than Clark’s. 

The first scar on Tim’s body is a thin line of paler skin, almost silvery, where Red Hood had cut his throat when he was still pit-crazy, and then nothing until his shoulders, which look exactly like he spent a significant part of his teens fighting Killer Croc

Kon rubs his thumb over a semi-circular scar that can only have come from teeth, and even though they’ve kissed and Tim had stripped in front of him, touching bare skin still feels… daring. Almost dangerous.

Tim is warm and human and real under his fingers, soft skin and the strangely smooth texture of his scars. “I can’t believe this is real.”

“Do a lot of your dreams involve you counselling me through a gender crisis brought on by the possibility of incest?”

“You’re such a bitch,” Kon tells him foldly, and leans in for another brief kiss. “I can’t believe I’m going to date you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“What, you think I’ve just been trying to tap that ass for the last five years? I mean, alright, yes, I have, but also, you’re my best friend, and you’ve been my best friend pretty much since I was brand new. Of course I’m going to date you. I’m going to take you to the movies and fly you anywhere you want to go and piss Ma off by trying to cook for you and buy you all the pretty dresses you want.”

“I’m the adopted child of a billionaire. I can afford to buy my own pretty dresses.”

“I know. I’m going to buy them for you anyway.”

Making Tim grin like that, like Kon is a complete dork and also his favourite person in the world, always feels like winning a prize. “You can buy me pretty dresses. But I draw the line at suits. Alfred would hang me from the crenellations if I let someone else pick out my suits.”

“What about underwear? Am I allowed to buy you sexy underwear?”

“Not until we’ve been dating for at least six months. And you have to let someone who’s actually worn bras and panties before help you pick it out.”

“That’s fair. Wait, does that mean you’re coming out? Like, officially?”

“Damn, I hadn’t thought of that. Boxers and pyjamas only.”

“Posing pouches?”

Tim laughs. “Are you sure you want to admit to that fetish on our first date?”

“I’m only admitting to kinks I actually have. Not that I need to. Tell me honestly that you haven’t been through all the porn in my browser history?”

“I haven’t. Since you came back from the dead.”

“You’re lucky I already knew you were a freak. You realise you have to let me watch all of your porn now in exchange?”

“You know me better than that.”

Kon sighs. “You’re right, I do. You have to let me watch all of your porn that won’t scar me for life.”

“Now?”

“No.” Kon uncrosses his legs and drops back down to the ground, so he’s kneeling between Tim’s thighs. “Now you have to kiss me again.”

Even kneeling up, the stool puts Tim higher than Kon, so that he has to lean down to kiss him. It shouldn’t be possible for someone of Tim’s build to loom, but he’d been trained by the best. It’s okay though, because it turns out Kon is totally into that, which doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. He’s always liked it when Tim got bossy. Even back when it used to piss him off he still thought it was kind of hot.

Tim cups his cheek before he kisses him, his thumb tracing Kon’s cheekbone, and Kon puts his hands on Tim’s thighs to remind himself not to just float away, because he totally feels like he could.

Tim’s gentler than he is in Kon’s fantasies, but that’s good, that means he can take his time, can concentrate on enjoying the kiss for its own sake and not keep jumping ahead to the possibility of what might happen next.

He’s kissing Tim. Tim is kissing him . That’s enough.

Eventually they move to the bed. Tim sprawls out across Kon’s chest like a blanket, sharp little elbows digging in every time he pushes himself up to kiss Kon, and Kon’s so happy he feels like his chest is going to burst.

He'd happily just stay like that forever, but despite evidence to the contrary, Tim’s only a baseline human, so Kon makes himself stop long enough to fetch him a drink and a protein bar.

When he gets back, Tim’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, naked as the day he was born, and Kon does his best to look like a normal well-adjusted vigilante and not a complete horndog.

Tim accepts the drink with a smile, one of the little secretive ones that always feel like a gift just for Kon. 

He sits next to Tim on the bed, and strokes the skin of his hip with his thumb and eats his own protein bar. They’re pretty good, as protein bars go, because Alfred would have had Tim sent to the pound if he hadn’t learned to actually appreciate food.

“Do you need to get home?” Tim asks, when he’s done.

“No. I’ll need to call Ma and Pa and let them know, but I can sleep over. Do you need to patrol?”

“It’s my night off, and for some reason I feel like actually obeying instructions for once and staying in.”

Kon grins at him. “And what reason is that, exactly?”

“Just a sudden strange impulse.”

Kon actually pauses for a moment, before he remembers that Bart isn’t going to appear to make the obvious joke. “Do you think we’ll get him back one day?”

“I try not to hope, but… There was a time when I never thought I’d see you again, either. I don’t know if I want to believe that means something, or if it’s more comforting to believe it’s random. I needed you, so badly, and you came back. If Bart doesn’t, does that mean I just didn’t want it hard enough?”

“Ma says that when you get a case of the what ifs, the important thing to remember is that that’s all they are. What ifs.”

“I think I should probably find that more comforting than I do.”

“Well, Lois says sitting around navel-gazing when there’s real shit to worry about it is just self indulgent.”

Tim laughs. “I think that’s more my speed.” He leans over the bed and kisses Kon, slow and sincere. “Getting you back was a miracle. I didn’t mean to imply it wasn’t.”

“No, I get it. But that’s the sort of thinking that’ll drive you crazy, and you’re plenty crazy enough as it is.”

“Too crazy for you?”

“Never.”

Tim kisses him again, and when he pulls away, it’s Scarlett watching him, her expression challenging. “You shouldn’t tempt fate, handsome. One day fate might answer.”

“If I make Tim a catwoman costume, do you become obsolete?” he asks, instead of replying, and promises his dick he’ll spend lots of time later thinking about the sharp smile she gives him in response. He’s always loved mean women and he feels like he’s missed out, not knowing he could have that and Tim in one package. “You’re just the right amount crazy. Promise.”

“I’m not sure that says anything good about your mental health,” Tim says, but he doesn’t look like he wants to fight Kon on this any more, so he’ll take it as a win.

“You already knew that.”

“If you turn out to have inherited any megalomania, I’m not going to be your Mercy Graves.”

“Sure? You’d get some pretty great pantsuits, and absolutely all your shoes would have knives in them.”

“Tempting.”

“And you can wear all the cream and white you want, because I don’t even have a mother.”

“If I’m your Mercy though, I can’t be your nemesis.”

“Red Hood can be my nemesis,” he says, because he’s feeling magnanimous. “You can fight him homoerotically to protect me.”

“What will you be doing?”

“Well, if he’s anything like as good looking as the rest of your family, watching.”

“And I thought I was the one with the voyeurism kink.”

“So you’re saying I should fight him homoerotically instead?”

“It occurs to me that I’ve never seen you in a suit.”

“Yeah? Do you want to?”

“I think it’s fair to say that there’s almost nothing you could wear that I wouldn’t find attractive on you, short of Joker cosplay.”

“Well, I don’t know how I’d feel about wearing a dress, but I’m prepared to try anything once if you’re the one asking.”

Tim grins. “If it makes you feel any better, you’d almost certainly look extremely butch in anything I put you in. One of the things you inherited from your alien father. No one is quite as masculine as Clark. I’m not entirely sure it’s not one of his superpowers.”

“Red Hood’s pretty masc as well, isn’t he? I wouldn’t have expected you to be into that.”

“They say people are attracted to qualities they lack. I won’t pretend I don’t find it appealing, but I think that’s more a side effect of the primary attraction. You, Jason, Steph, even Bart, you’re honest in a way I can’t be. Straight-forward in a way I’m not sure I ever was. I have always known exactly where I stood with you. I have trusted you to tell me what you are thinking, to only keep things from me when it was strictly necessary, and you have always lived up to that trust, despite getting nothing of the kind in return.”

“That’s not true, though. You gave as much as you could. Even when we were kids, and I was desperate to know your real name and see your eyes, I knew that you were only keeping stuff from us because you had to. You’re a spook, but you’re not a liar, not really. Not about the stuff that matters.”

“What it would be, to see myself through your eyes. You make me want to be a better person.”

“Right back atcha. And however hot you’d look in your bodyguard gear, I know if I ever did go evil, you’d be right there to drag me back into the light, kicking and screaming.”

“And if it was me who went dark?”

There’s something raw in Tim’s voice, something vulnerable and hurt that tells Kon this is more than just a hypothetical for Tim. This is something that terrifies him for real.

“I’d do whatever it took to get you back, and if I couldn’t do it, then I’d sic Alfred on you.”

That has the desired effect, breaking some of the tension and getting Tim to smile. “I might not be especially good, but I’m definitely intelligent enough to not even try it during Alfred’s lifetime.”

“You’re good,” Kon tells him, throwing his protein bar wrapped in the direction of the trash can and beginning the serious and important work of kissing Tim back into the mattress. “You’re so good.”

Tim shivers under him, presses up to kiss him harder and makes a low hot noise when Kon uses his TTK to push him back down, and Kon has so many individual fantasies he almost doesn't know where to start.

Except he does.

Tim meets his eyes when he pulls back, open and honest and right here in the moment with him, everything Kon’s been dreaming off almost since he was first conscious. “I love you.”

Face to face like this, no masks or make-up or pretense between them, he gets to watch the warmth in Tim’s eyes, the way he bites his lip like he’s trying to keep from grinning, the slight blush that heats his cheeks when he says, “I love you too,” and Kon’s never been so glad he got a second chance at life as he is in this exact moment.

“I am going to date the shit out of you.”

He hopes making Tim laugh never stops feeling like a gift, no matter how long they live.