Chapter Text
They are sitting on a park bench, and the stars are bright and the moon is shining, but Kon can only focus on Tim’s smile.
The glasses are sitting oddly on his nose and around his ears, new and strange and ‘identity keeping,’ as Clark had called it. Kon’s not really buying it, and by the way Tim is snorting, he’s not either.
“Is he serious? Is he actually, really, serious? Like- they’re just- glasses. They’re just glasses-”
And Kon’s laughing too, and their soft conversation is filling the night air. The swings next to them are swaying softly in the wind, and the stars keep twinkling, and Kon can’t stop smiling.
It’s nice, some heavy weight off his shoulders. Tim keeps chuckling, and Kon keeps chuckling with him, and there are no capes or masks or threats or violence. Just them, together, and it feels nice. It feels good. It feels right. He feels, for once, like he’s normal.
Like being normal might be a good thing to be.
Tim had been nervous and flighty at the beginning of their date, some six hours earlier, sunglasses over his eyes and hands shoved deep in hoodie pockets as he stepped out of the subway station at Metropolis. But then there had been the museum, and then the movie, and then driving over to a field that was particularly great for fireflies, and then they had gone out and gotten ice cream and now there’s this, and Tim is shining brighter than any star, blue orbs free of shades and hands wrapped around his stomach in laughter.
When the other boy finally manages to stop heaving, he looks up and he grins yet again- and Kon wishes he was always like this, carefree and happy, not weighed down by stress or tiredness or pain- nudges shoulders and says, “For what it’s worth, they don’t look half-bad.”
And Kon can’t stop his own mouth from turning upwards in a smile, and he’s leaning down and pressing a tiny smattering of kisses all over Tim’s face, and Tim’s is laughing and weakly shoving at his chest, asking about What if someone sees?, but they’re out in the middle of nowhere, out in a tiny local playground in Smallville, and really the idea of some crazy guy hiding out in the bushes and taking pictures is ridiculous enough that it makes Kon laugh into the older teen’s mouth.
Kon wakes up to his cell phone ringing.
Groggily, he picks up and swipes right, pressing it to his ear and muttering a half-asleep, “‘ello,” without even really thinking about it.
Tim’s voice is swearing in his ear, and then apologizing, and Kon is suddenly quite a bit more awake.
“-o sorry, Kon, I thought that we were alone and I told you that someone might see and-”
Kon blinks up at his ceiling. It’s painted sky blue, sort of like Tim’s eyes, and he is confused.
Finally, he manages to get out a “What?”
Tim’s voice pauses, freezes mid word and he lets out a small, nervous breath. Kon instantly tenses, because that’s not right, Tim shouldn’t ever feel nervous about him ever.
“You haven’t seen it yet?”
Kon’s mind flashes to a dozen different possible things his boyfriend could mean, but it only just results in a big ball of confusion.
“...No? ‘s like, eight thirty in the mornin’…”
“Geez, you’d think as a farm boy you’d be the morning person in this relationship.”
The Kryptonian almost wants to snort. He is the morning person in their relationship: once he’s up, he’s up, it just takes him a minute to get there. The only reason Tim is so awake is because he probably never went to sleep in the first place.
“‘s not mornin’, ‘s time to sleeep… ”
Tim laughs, a little high, a little incredulous. It rings in Kon’s ear, and he smiles a little lazily, eyes closed. With Tim laughing like that, it’s almost easy to ignore the sounds of yelling reporters and camera flashes outside-
Wait, what?
Kon’s eyes snap open, and he’s out of bed and squinting through the blinds in milliseconds.
There’s a herd of reporters outside the house.
Kon blinks. Takes a step back. His hand finds the phone and he brings it to his ear.
“Tim,” he says, “Tim.”
And then-
“It’s not paranoia when they’re really out to get you.”
There’s silence on the other end of the phone for a half a moment, and then Tim lets loose another snort of laughter. It’s a real laugh this time, the one he only lets out when he’s honestly amused, that little soft puff of air that escapes in a quiet almost half-there chuckle out of Tim’s throat.
It’s a good sound. Kon presses the phone tighter against his ear and backs away from the window, steps out of his room and goes to find the grandparental unit in their bedroom. He knocks, gets no answer, heads downstairs.
His hair is a mess, he’s wearing only a too big tank top that he’s pretty sure used to be Clark’s and a pair of boxer shorts. He stumbles down the worn wooden steps, careens down the narrow hallway corner, and pitches into the kitchen.
(He has such grace in his bones. He has never once been clumsy all his life. If anyone says otherwise, they’re lying. He is a man of decorum and dexterity. Such elegance. Much finesse. Very agility. ….. Yeah .)
Jonathan and Martha Kent are sitting at the dining table, mugs of coffee in hand. There are homemade cinnamon rolls on the stove top and warm welcoming smiles on their faces, and Jonathan gives a wave with a quick glance away from the morning paper and Martha indicates he should sit down, and so he does.
The sounds of the reporters are even louder down here. Tim can hear them through the phone speakers, and Kon can practically sense the cringe in his boyfriend’s voice as he asks, “Are they crowding around your house? Wait- why am I even asking- of course they’re crowding around your house. Oh my gods, Kon, I’m so sorry-”
Martha vaguely gestures in the direction of his phone, her other hand busy separating three of the rolls from the rest and onto a plate.
“Is that your boy?”
Kon nods, and the woman smiles, mouths, "He still needs to come over and meet us!"
Kon waves her off, mouths back "Working on it," waits for Tim to stop rambling. At this point, he knows that interrupting isn't going to get him anywhere. Best to let the younger get it out of his system and then work through the list of concerns and problems and battle strategies. It was just the way Tim worked.
“So basically, the first newsfeed started reporting on us at roughly 5:30 this morning- some sort of tiny business that was small enough that even Bruce’s technology wasn’t considering it as a threat. You were being featured as my ‘mysterious gay lover,’” and Conner wasn’t sure how, but he could definitely hear the quotation marks in Tim’s voice, “and everyone was screaming about how I was gay. Around six, the bigger companies caught hold of it, and one of your classmates- who chose to be anonymous in print but screw that, I hacked the company’s mainframe and it’s Dave Parker- he identified you and apparently also gave away your address. The git. I was going to let him off easy and just clog all his emails with spam and prevent him from logging into his Steam account, but that was just an asshole maneuver so now I’m also going to send his parents an email about his subscription to a porn account and let him suffer.”
There was a few moments of silence, the impossibly long rant finally pausing as Tim took a moment to breathe. There was also, however, the distinct clacking of keys as the younger teen typed furiously away at something.
“Wait,” says Conner, because no way, “you’re not doing all this on the bat computer, are you?”
Tim snorts.
“Of course I am. We are in a very precarious situation: I think you’re highly underestimating the danger here. We are in crisis.”
...Kon El can imagine it. Tim, downing his however-many’th pot of coffee, Stephanie’s Wonder Woman pajama bottoms low on his hips and his massive sleep shirt- the blue one he stole from Dick ages and ages ago and is only just recently starting to not look like an ill fitted dress- hanging off his shoulders. The bags under his eyes are probably enormous, and his legs have probably fallen asleep without him realizing from where he has crossed them underneath him on the big monitor chairt.
He probably looks like a mess. A sleep deprived, greasy haired, overworked mess of a human being.
…...He probably looks adorable.
Kon is sort of tempted to fly over just to take a peak.
But no, no, bad idea, especially with all the people and cameras parked right outside the door.
He doesn’t think Tim would take well to being called adorable well, either.
To distract him from the bad thoughts, Kon shoves a roll into his mouth, chews on it, speaks around it. Martha gives him glare for that, smacking him lightly on the back of the head with her spoon as she makes her way to the kitchen sink.
Smiling sheepishly at her, he swallows, and then tries again.
“You just like using the big monitor, ya nerd. Besides, it’s not that big a deal. I mean, it sucks, obviously, but like- we’ll get through it. No biggie.”
There’s a groan of complete despair on the other side of the phone, more worthy of a full out alien invasion than a relationship reveal, but Kon doesn’t say anything about that, either. Just sort of hums and piles on the glaze, grabbing another roll to keep the half remaining on his plate company.
John Kent turns to the next page of his newspaper. Martha washes dishes. Outside, reporters scream in a clashing sort of harmony with the usual morning bird song.
“You don’t understand,” Tim hisses through the phone, and the typing is louder than ever, “I have worked very, very hard in avoiding any sort of public reputation whatsoever- it was perfect. I never did anything to draw any attention and so the media always ignored me because I was boring, especially in contrast with like, the little demon and my gods, Dick, and it’s only going to get worse as more people wake up and see the headlines and-”
Suddenly, the other teen falls silent. Kon waits long enough that he begins to grow concerned, before he hears it.
In a near silent, completely horrified whisper, Tim speaks.
“Shit. I’ve become the problem child.”
And Kon- laughs. Can’t help it. Yes, it’s a bit unnerving that there are a bunch of people outside who all want to get into his business and will probably respect no boundaries doing so. And, yes, it’s probably going to be trickier going incognito now with his face plastered all over the news. But hearing Tim flip out about it through the phone- hysteria fueled with sleep deprivation and probably way too much coffee to be healthy- and sitting in the calm of the Kent farmhouse kitchen, he’s not too worried, can’t even bring himself to try.
On the other end of the line, Tim is complaining about him being a horrible boyfriend and about the entirety of his life in general- “The internet is flipping out. Tumblr is- actually, no, no- I don’t want to know about Tumblr. But they’re calling me gay, Kon, I’m not even a homosexual, I am bisexual and this is so unfair, this is biphobia, this is bi erasure- would you please stop laughing?”- and then moves on to swearing up a storm again because, “Shit, shit, shit- what do you think Bruce is going to say? This is so not how I want to come out-”
That gives the Kryptonian a pause.
“Wait a second- doesn’t Bruce already know we’re dating?”
“...Yes? Probably. I never explicitly told him but he knows? It’s the principle of the thing- stop laughing-”
Ten minutes later, breakfast is winding down, and so is Tim. The other teen seems to finally be calming down after cycling through a massive assortment of topics and worries and a long list of insults that Kon knew he didn’t mean.
But then Tim says, “Seriously, though, seriously,” and he knows that, for all of the Boy Wonder’s joking, there are actual underlying concerns and repressed fears that need to be addressed, “What are we going to do?”
Kon hums, phone pressed between his ear and shoulder blade as he helps Martha wash up. Jonathan is putting aside have s new paper and grabbing a towel for drying.
“Well,” he says, scrubbing at a particularly tough spot on the plate, “do you have any ideas?”
“Hmmmm… I suppose we could turn off the security protocols at Arkham for an hour: breakouts always get great news coverage and it would distract all the reporters from zoning in on our love life-”
….Maybe he isn’t at quite a serious headspace as Connor thinks.
“Tim.”
“Okay, okay- It was just a joke. Sort of.”
And there, there, a nervous little tremor, practically nonexistent if you aren’t really looking for it, coating over his boyfriend’s tone. He feels almost honoured, the fact that he’s gotten to a point in his relationship with the other hero that Tim allowed the vulnerability into his voice at all. Quickly, Kon excused himself back to his bedroom and sat on his bed, thankful for the slight decrease in noise from the outside world.
“I’m not going anywhere, you know. We’ll get through this, just like we got through everything else. I mean- we’re not that interesting, right? The press will move on from us eventually.”
He can hear Tim breathing, breathing, in and out, in and out.
“Right. Right. This will all blow over. I’ll put out a statement, we’ll lay low for a little while, something more important and flashy will distract them and then everything will go back to normal.”
“Right.”
A moment of silence.
Then-
“Kon, what if Bruce tries to give me The Talk? Shit, Kon, Batman, he’s Batman, Batman might want to talk to me about the Birds and the Bees, Kon- ”
He struggles to keep a straight face, stares up at the blue ceiling, and says, in his best proximity of Batman’s voice, “They’re disappearing at an alarming rate.”
It’s all it takes, and Conner can hear Tim’s laughter coming from over the line, and he just closes his eyes and laughs with him.