Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time that Tim ever meets Lex Luthor face-to-face is in the aftermath of a house fire.

He’d been out on a solo patrol on the far outskirts of Gotham, when he’d gotten a call that an old apartment building had gone up in flames. He’d gotten there too-slow to stop the blaze, and had sent a ping out to any nearby members of the League. As the fire eats along at the west side of the building, Tim busies himself with the straggling evacuees.

He herds people down the stairs and away from the broken elevators, and gets an ETA for backup as he runs back up the stairs in threes, for more. Smoke curls along the ceiling, black and foul-smelling, and he breathes a sigh of relief for the gas mask strapped over his face.

Now, Tim’s trying to wrangle two toddlers and a pet cat down the stairs, while their panicked mother waits outside with her husband. He’s got soot on his clothes and baby spit-up on his cape and he’s just trying to keep a cool head until backup arrives. The housecat digs its claws into his shoulder, and Tim grits his teeth. He kicks open the door to the stairwell with a little too much force, and whacks something hard.

“Ow, hey!” someone says, and Tim’s hackles rise. He pushes through the door and out into the hallway, where he’s met with the sight of Superboy, floating a half-foot off the ground and looking miffed. Tim raises his head to glare back for a beat, before he sighs. Backup is backup, at the end of the day.

“Superboy,” he says. The mask distorts his voice a little. “The fire’s coming from the west. Evac’s almost done, but we’ve still got a little more to do.”

Superboy stares at him, eyes wide and searching for a moment, before- “Oh. Oh, hi.”

Tim stares at him for a beat. Superboy lifts his hand in an awkward little half-wave. They’ve met before, a few times at this point, but it’s been on a battlefield, and without much time to exchange pleasantries. As it is-

“You’re Robin,” Superboy says. “Sorry, I- the mask threw me.”

“You’d think the brightly-coloured cape would be a tip-off,” Tim says brusquely, and hands him the yowling cat. “Come on. We’ve gotta get them downstairs.”

To his credit, Superboy accepts the animal with only a little protest, and falls in behind Tim as he races down the stairs. He doesn’t try and grab him and fly off, to Tim’s relief. The fire’s still not reached them, but it’s catching fast. Tim doesn’t know how long they’ve got until this side of the building is compromised as well.

“You know, I’m a little hurt you didn’t call me specifically for help,” Superboy says as they clear the third floor landing. He sounds a little wry. “I mean, I heard the ping and all, but still.”

“I don’t know you,” Tim reminds him snarkily, and Superboy manages a groan that sounds like a verbal iteration of rolling ones’ eyes. “We’ve met like, twice. Forgive me if you’re not the first call I make when I want backup.”

“We’ve met three times, actually” Superboy counters cheerfully. That wretched housecat is curled up against his chest, purring away like it hadn’t just spent ten minutes trying to claw Tim’s eyes out of his skull. He glares at it. “That’s friendship territory. Besides, I’ve only really been doing this for like, a few months, so I don’t really think-.”

“Fine,” Tim says gustily. “Whatever. The building’s on fire, though, so if you could focus on that, instead of your networking-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Superboy says lightly, and they burst out through the door and into the street. Tim hands over the kids to their parents, and Superboy holds on to his cat. It purrs against his muscled chest, seeming perfectly content right where it was. “I’ve got this.”

His freeze breath isn’t as clean as Superman’s is, and the ensuing frost damage to the metal infrastructure of the building means that it probably won’t be salvageable. The whole structure teeters ominously as fire and rescue pull up to the scene, but with his TTK, he’s able to keep it off the ground until fire and rescue pull up. Not ideal. Still, no casualties and no supervillains are what Tim counts as a good day. He pulls off his gas mask, and gulps in a breath of relatively fresh air.

“Hey,” he says to Superboy as they set up some barriers. “Why are you here, anyway? Not that I’m complaining, just. You don’t usually work in Gotham.”

Superboy shrugs. “Metropolis is a mess right now,” he says, and there’s something there, something in the set of his broad shoulders that makes Tim want to pick at its edges. He itches for his computer, for a news broadcast. “I was out to clear my head”

“What, you kill somebody?” Tim asks, and Superboy shakes his head, dark curls bouncing as he laughs.

“Not yet.” He’s still fidgeting, loosely tugging at the gold hoop in his earlobe. Tim wonders, passively, how he managed to pierce himself with indestructible skin.

Behind the fire engines and ambulances were a series of black armoured vehicles. Tim squints at them, letting the conversation trail off. They’re not the press, and they’re certainly not paramedics. He shifts, trying to alert Superboy to the strangeness without saying anything outright. A woman in a dark suit opens the door to the lead SUV, and out steps-

Tim had spoken too soon about the whole no supervillains thing. “Is that fucking Lex Luthor?” he asks incredulously. Superboy looks up and his eyes widen comically.

“Aw, shit,” he says. “He’s going to kill me.”

“He’s what?” Tim yelps. He’d been briefed on Superboy’s situation, as soon as Bruce had heard about it. He’d heard about Cadmus Labs, about the mix of DNA that made up Superboy’s existence. About how Superman had taken the kid under his wing, to keep. Still, Tim hadn’t thought that Luthor would be so bold as to try and kill Superboy in public.

“Ah, no-” Superboy starts, but trails off as Luthor spots them.

He glides through the chaos, speaking measured orders into his cell phone as he walks. He’s wearing a dark, expensive-looking long coat and leather gloves to ward off the mid-October chill. The rescue personnel part like the goddamn Red Sea around him, clearing the path to where Tim and Superboy stand among the civilians. There’s a steely glint in Luthor’s ice-cold eyes.

“He’s not going to hurt you. I won’t let him,” Tim says, and tries to make himself sound more assured than he feels. Superboy shifts around behind him, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Luthor says something cold and final into the phone and hangs up as he approaches them. Tim’s hands clench around his staff. He takes a step to put himself properly in between Superboy and Luthor, weapon at the ready. Luthor looks at him coolly, like Tim is a piece of dirt on the bottom of his thousand-dollar shoes that he’s very unimpressed by.

Tim pitches his voice up to carry, says; “The League are on their way, right now. Don’t even think of trying something.” Luthor raises a single eyebrow. Superboy is poking at his ribs, muttering something, but Tim’s determined to stand his ground. Luthor’s eyes are a metallic shade of grey, and he gives Tim a dismissive once-over.

“They had better be,” he says. Tim blinks in surprise, but Luthor’s already looking right past Tim for Superboy. “If your guardian isn’t already on his way, you ought to try and summon him personally,” he says to Superboy. “He and I need to have a chat.”

“Listen, I-” Superboy starts, and then stops, because in a blur of blue and red, Superman himself is there, shining golden and bright. In a single step, he’s put himself right up in Luthor’s face, almost obscuring him entirely with his sheer bulk. Superboy takes a big step to the side, obviously trying to listen in, and Tim’s never claimed not to be nosy, so he does the same.

“What is this, Luthor?” Superman demands, arms crossed over his chest. He towers over Luthor, and Luthor glares right back, seemingly undeterred. “You’re stalking him? That’s low, even for you.”

Luthor doesn’t rise to the bait, just tilts his head, eyes glittering dangerously. “Tell me, Superman,” he says icily. “When I agreed to let you care for the boy, did you interpret that as blanket permission to let him run wild?”

Superman’s brows furrow. From behind Tim, Superboy starts to say something, but Tim elbows him in the side. Luthor and Superman don’t even look away from each other. “He has the same powers I had at that age,” Superman protests. “It would be wrong to keep him from using them, especially when they’re still developing.”

“I’m not- I don’t care about what he wants to do with his evenings, Superman,” Luthor says venomously. “He’s sixteen, and practically indestructible- if he wants to run around with the other kids in costumes, so be it. But I do care when you’re putting his identity at risk. That reflects on me as much as it does on him, and I refuse to let your blunders put a stain on my reputation.”

“I should have known you wouldn’t care unless it was about you,” Superman says. Tim doesn’t think he can remember Superman ever talking to someone like that. Luthor scoffs.

“My reputation extends to my son,” he spits. Behind Tim, Superboy makes a short, choked-off sound. Tim raises an eyebrow. He wouldn’t have thought that Luthor possessed any paternal instincts, and from the titters from the crowd around him, he suspects that everyone else in the area didn’t either. “It will get him very far in life, provided that it remains intact until he’s an adult.”

While Luthor seems not to care about any of the stragglers around him, Superman, at least, spares a glance for the bystanders. His gaze catches on Tim and behind him, on Superboy. His expression doesn’t waver, simply because Tim doesn’t think Superman’s expressions can, but there’s something there. He turns back to Luthor. “Listen, can’t we have this conversation somewhere else?”

“So now we care about privacy, do we?” Luthor says archly. Superman puts his hand on Luthor’s elbow, tries to steer him back towards the line of black cars at the end of the block, but Luthor shakes him off in a single, sharp movement. His glare is red-hot. Superman’s eyes narrow ever so slightly, until Luthor lets out a short sigh. “Fine. The penthouse, and if you’re even a minute later than I am, I will personally write up the custody suit that you’ll be getting hit with.”

“Lex-” Superman says, and that’s the last that Tim manages to catch as Luthor stalks away, back to the line of cars on the side of the road. Superman stays right on his heels, cape fluttering in his wake. Tim stares after them, bemused.

“I thought he’d take at least until Christmas to figure out about the secret identity thing,” Superboy said from behind his shoulder. Tim startles- he’d almost forgotten that Superboy was there at all. “I had Superman get me the face-blurring glasses and everything.”

Tim raises an eyebrow. “Wait- you’re telling me that you managed to fuck up your secret identity so badly that Lex Luthor had to come down to yell at Superman over it?”

“I’m surprised he didn’t yell at me about it.” Superboy scratches at the back of his head, sheepish. “I had an… unfortunate hook up,” he says. Tim thinks of their very first meeting, and grimaces. “She might have gone online with some things to say about me.”

“Wh- You tell your hookups about your secret identity?” Tim asks. He can only imagine how badly that would go over to Bruce. It’s such a tremendously stupid idea that he’s almost impressed. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I didn’t think she’d tell anyone,” Superboy protests. “She tweeted something about it, and then I got her to delete it, but-”

“Oh my God,” Tim says, faintly amazed. “No wonder Luthor was so mad. He almost got outed for having a kid with his nemesis.”

Superboy stares at him. “How do you know about that?”

Tim draws himself up to his full height. “I work with Batman,” he says gravely. “I know everything.” Superboy looks almost spooked.

“You can lecture me about it after we get everyone out of here,” Superboy says, and hurriedly starts walking towards an ambulance, cat in hand. He’s clearly already planning his escape route. Tim starts after him immediately.

It’s an art thing, or so Bruce tells him. Tim’s a bit unimpressed.

The gala feels like every other billionaire-filled event that Tim’s ever been to, meaning that he’s counting the minutes before he can find a window to slip out of, and disappear back to the Cave. Except this event’s in Metropolis, so he’s stuck at Bruce’s elbow instead of halfway back to his room by now.

They meander through the crowd, exchanging pleasantries as they go.

Well. Bruce is. Tim is trying not to openly glower at everyone who crosses their path, while simultaneously thinking about how to steal a car. ‘Course, that plan is already doomed, since Bruce has been keeping an eye on him since his last solo patrol. To be fair, Tim hadn’t been counting on sort-of threatening Superman’s arch-nemesis with a staff at a routine house fire, but that excuse got tired as soon as Bruce reminded him of the fifteen different protocols he could have enlisted instead of directly challenging the man with his staff. It’s been two weeks, and he’s still been relegated to following Bruce’s caped ass around town.

In any case; Tim’s in a brand-new, stiff-ass suit and he’s unhappy about it.

Bruce takes a glass of something bubbly off of a waiter as they pass. Tim wonders if he could get away with doing the same, but a short, sharp look tells him otherwise. Bruce glides through the crowd like he belongs there, offering a polished, gleaming smile to anyone and everyone around him.

Tim’s only a little jealous of how well he slips into the role of coy, perfect billionaire. He keeps a few steps behind Bruce, and tries not to let it show on his face just how out-of-place he feels at the current moment. He focuses on all that so much that he almost walks right into a table.

Cursing, he ducks back over towards where Bruce is making polite small talk with a pair of vaguely-familiar old people. As he does, he casts a glance out at the bustling room, trying to see around the shininess, and pauses at the sight of a single figure in the crowd.

Bruce leaves the conversation with a well-placed word, and turns around, right as Tim reaches him. His expression is pleasantly blank. “Is this some long-winded way of getting back at me?” Tim hisses, and Bruce raises a single eyebrow.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says in a blank, neutral tone that means yes. Tim narrows his eyes.

“Right,” he says. “And yet we’ve managed to be at an event with-”

“What a pleasure,” comes a low voice, and Tim nearly jumps out of his skin. “Bruce Wayne, drawn out from his castle.”

Behind him stands Lex Luthor, all dark suit and glittering eyes. He’s wearing the fakest smile Tim’s ever seen on a human being.

“Luthor,” Bruce says evenly. He’s giving Luthor’s fake grin a run for its money. “Now this is a surprise.”

“A pleasant one, I hope,” Luthor says. He offers Bruce a look, then tilts his head to look at Tim, and his eyes are cool, assessing. He’s not really that much taller than Tim, but the way he looks down at him gives the illusion of a greater distance. Tim tries not to fidget.

“I thought you usually wintered at Stryker’s,” Bruce says dryly. “I wasn’t expecting to see you back in this crowd until after Christmas, at least.”

Tim thinks Luthor’s eye might twitch at that- but it’s gone so quickly that he thinks he must have imagined it. “I considered it, but it didn’t fit my schedule,” he says. “Besides, I’ve recently had my hands full with other matters.”

He’s skirting the subject, like it’s not been all over the tabloids for weeks, now. Bruce looks politely disinterested. “Oh?”

“My ward,” Luthor says, like he’s letting Bruce in on a secret, “is back from boarding school for the time being. I’ve been trying to entertain him, but you know how boys are at that age.”

Whatever Tim had been expecting from Luthor’s quiet, threatening conversation with Superman that night, it hadn’t been a change in custody. He was taking in an orphaned boy as a ward, paying for his education until he graduated high school. He’d skirted the question of the boy’s parentage, but there were enough physical similarities between them that rumours spread, and they spread quick.

Any noise about Superboy, about a secret identity, or a hookup-gone-wrong were quickly and mercilessly wiped away. Luthor himself had done a brief interview about the whole thing, asking for privacy in measured, firm words. The few pictures of the kid in civvies that Tim had seen circulating were blurry, deliberately low-quality shots. Tim was almost impressed by Luthor’s media team.

“Boarding school,” Bruce says neutrally. “It’s convenient timing, don’t you think?.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite catch your meaning, there,” Luthor replies loftily. He’s glaring daggers at Bruce. If Tim didn’t know better, he’d say that Bruce was having fun.

“There’s been a lot of press about him lately,” Bruce says. “Good press. Distracts from that last deal with S.T.A.R. Labs falling through, doesn’t it?” WayneTech had gotten the deal instead. Bruce had essentially done a victory lap when it’d gone through, Tim recalls.

“Shop talk on my night off? I’m disappointed, Bruce,” Luthor says, giving Bruce a pointed look. Bruce hummed, taking a sip of his champagne. “Besides, if WayneTech actually invented things, instead of poaching them off of competitors, maybe there would be more cause for celebration on your part.”

“I’m proud of the work I do, and of the collaborations Wayne Enterprises engages in,” Bruce says. His smile is ticking towards being more of a smirk. “Particularly because none of them have ever resulted in a horde of murderous androids destroying my city.” Tim wants to leave this conversation immediately. He tries to signal this with a furtive glance at Bruce, to no avail.

Luthor looks mildly annoyed. “I suppose you rest easily knowing that were such an accident to occur under your watch, you could simply call Gotham’s resident spandex-clad hero,” Tim can practically hear the air quotes around that last word. “Forgive me if I don’t trust a caped madman with the safety of a city.”

“You know, I’ve heard the oddest rumour about you and a certain caped madman,” Bruce said, trailing off. He was practically laughing. Luthor’s eye twitched.

“If you wanted my comments on all that, you’d be better off waiting outside with the camera crews and the vultures.”

“Careful now, Luthor,” Bruce says, tilting his head, just so. “You never know who’s listening.”

“I’ll say it to their faces too,” Luthor says. “I told Conner on the way over-”

Tim’s head whipped around. An out. “Your kid’s here?” he blurted. Bruce looked down at him, a mild frown on his face. Luthor looks down at him like he’d half forgotten that Tim existed at all.

“He’s ransacking the dessert table, last I saw him,” Luthor says. He’s looking at Tim with a strange, almost pensive look on his face. Tim doesn’t care- there’s a plan forming on the edges of his mind.

“I’m going to go say hi, okay?” He gave Bruce a too-wide grin, already starting off away from that nightmare of a conversation. “Nice seeing you, Mr. Luthor,” he calls over his shoulder.

“The pleasure is mine,” Luthor replies to Tim’s retreating back. “Now, Wayne-”

Luthor’s intel was right. Superboy-his ward- Conner, was, in fact, over by the desserts. He had one of the dainty little plates piled high with bite-sized pieces of cake, and tiny, flower-shaped cookies. Tim practically slides around the table to get to him before anyone else at this godforsaken party tries to rope him into a conversation.

“Hi,” Tim says, a shade too loud, and Superboy looks up.

He’s wearing a dark blue suit, in a navy shade that made his tanned skin look golden in the crystalline light. His curls fall artfully over his forehead, nearly covering one bright blue eye, and when he sees Tim, the corner of his mouth curls up in a slight smile, revealing a flash of too-sharp teeth.

He’s smiling, but his eyes are searching, roving over Tim’s face with an intensity that should make Tim uncomfortable. There’s a long moment of silence. Tim clears his throat. “Hi,” he repeats, and Superboy’s eyes widen momentarily. He blinks.

“Hey,” he says simply. “Want a cookie?”

“Um,” Tim says, and then shakes himself a little, searching for everything he’d read about Superboy since the last time they’d crossed paths. “Conner, right?”

Superboy made a face. “I go by Kon, most of the time,” he says. “Conner’s just for the press. Dad wanted me to sound professional, whatever that means.”

“Okay. Kon, then,” Tim says, and Kon’s face splits into an easy, light smile. The expression is almost painfully handsome on him, enough so that Tim feels a little disarmed by it. He blinks hard. “I’m Tim. Tim Drake, but I’m here with-”

“Bruce Wayne. I know.” Tim blinks. “I remembered your face,” Kon says, and then looks a little sheepish. “I mean. I noticed you, when you came in.”

“Guess I made an impression” he says wryly. Kon smiles at him, brighter than the lights gleaming around them.

“Don’t let it go to your head,” he says. “I was surprised that people younger than forty were allowed past the front door.”

Tim surprises himself by actually laughing. “I guess we do lower the median age in here by about twenty years.”

“For real, though,” Kon says. “I’m trying to get one of everything, but it keeps falling off these tiny little plates.” He holds out his horde of dessert. “If you want a cookie, or something.”

“Your greed sickens me,” Tim says lightly. He takes a tiny macaron off of the top of the pile, and nibbles at the corner. It’s floral and sweet. He doesn’t love it.

“The worst part is that nobody else is eating,” Kon muses. “They’re all just wandering around, ignoring all the food.”

They’ve got a decent angle from where they’re standing, half-hidden behind a chocolate fountain, to glower at the bustling partygoers without being spotted. “They think they’re too good for it,” Tim says, and Kon huffs at his side.

“I guess you’d be used to this sort of scene, being with Wayne and all,” Kon says. “It’s my first time.” Tim knows this- he suspects everyone knows this, based on the hubbub from the media earlier, but he doesn’t say it. Instead-

“How’re you liking it?”

Kon makes a face. He leans down a little, voice hushed like a secret. “I’m not,” he says honestly. “No offence, man, but this party kind of blows.”

Tim actually laughs outright. Kon looks at him, mouth half-open. “You have no idea how good it feels to hear someone else say that,” he says. Kon shuffles a little closer, close enough that their shoulders brush, as they stand, looking out at the crowd. Tim feels a truly terrible idea forming in the back of his mind.

“I bet we can get up onto the roof of this place,” Tim blurts, before he can let himself think. “Ditch all this, if you want.”

Kon looks at him with an expression that can only be described as delighted.

“I like your style, Drake,” he says. “Lead the way.”

“Your-” dad, he doesn’t say, “-uh, Luthor won’t mind?”

Kon shrugs. “He’s fussy about the paps, but beyond that, I don’t think he’ll give a shit.” His grin is a flash of white, catching Tim’s eye. “I think it’ll give him a headache, if someone gets a pic of us on top of the fiftieth floor, or whatever.”

Tim smiles right back, a little wickedly. “I guess we’ll just have to not get caught.”

They leave through a side door, and dodge around a few waiters before they can get to the maze of hallways leading to the stairwell. As they walk, Kon manages to talk the entire way, telling Tim about the video games he plays, and the comics he’s been reading and hey, do you have your own chauffeur, because that’s crazy, and Tim starts to wonder if he even needs air at all by the time they finally find the stairs.

“How tall is this place?” Tim asks, and Kon cranes his neck to look up. “Because my legs are tired just looking at this.”

“Well, you promised me the roof,” Kon says, stepping around him to get to the stairs, “so I guess we’d better get climbing.”

“If you insist,” Tim says, but he’s not really complaining at all. It’s a bit like deja vu, only in reverse, he thinks, with Kon in front of him as they ascend. They pass a landing, and go right back up. Through the slim window, Tim can see the city glittering in the night.

“Do you think we could hang out in a context that doesn’t involve doing stairs together?” Kon says as they round the landing. Tim huffs out a laugh. There’s a little, nagging thought at the back of his brain, but Kon smiles at him over his shoulder, and Tim lets himself put it aside.

“I guess you’ll have to see if I want to hang out again after this,” Tim says, raising his chin in challenge. “If this is boring, you’ll never see me again.”

Kon puts a hand over his heart. “No,” he gasps, and they grin at each other like a couple of dweebs for a second. Tim’s heart is pounding in his ears. He really should do more cardio in training.

They eventually make it to the landing at the top of the stairs. There’s a door leading out to the roof- marked very clearly with authorized personnel only. Unsurprisingly, when Tim goes to try it, he finds that it’s locked. Kon, over his shoulder, sighs.

“No shot at convincing a janitor to open it for us, you think?”

Tim fishes around in his pocket for a lockpick. He gets down on one knee, fiddling with the door. “Just wait,” he says. The lock’s not a complex one, and just by looking at it, he has a feeling that this will only take a minute. He slips the turner into the base of the keyway, and palms his hook. Kon is staring at him.

“Do you just carry around that stuff all the time?” he asks. Tim can’t quite decipher his tone.

“They practically teach you this stuff in any Gotham high school,” Tim jokes. He wonders, halfheartedly, if it’s dumb to want Kon to be impressed by it. “I learned how to do it from a friend. It’s a good skill to have.”

“Huh,” Kon says. Tim turns back to the door, and starts feeling for the pins. “That’s really cool.”

Tim’s still trying to think of something to say to that when the lock pops open. Relieved, he gets back to his feet and pushes the door open. “After you,” he says, and Kon tips an imaginary hat at him.

The rooftop outside is big and flat and all concrete, which is a little underwhelming, Tim thinks, as someone who’s spent a lot of time on Gotham’s rooftops. It’s cold too, colder than he’d expect for mid-November. Still, he follows Kon as he wanders over to the edge of the roof. It’s dark outside, but it doesn’t feel dark in the way that Tim is used to. The city of Metropolis sprawls out below them, all gleaming lights and shining glass.

Tim slips past Kon, leads the way to the very edge of the rooftop. He stands with the toe of one shiny dress shoe hanging over the ledge, looking down. It’s a dizzying drop, all twenty-fucking-billion floors to the pavement below. He can see a crowd of people, cameras flashing at the door.

“Woah,” he breathes. Cars drive along tiny streets below, looking like toys on a track. To Kon, he says; “It’s a hell of a view.”

“Yeah,” Kon says, and when Tim looks up, Kon’s just at his shoulder. Their eyes meet. “You’re gonna give me a heart attack though, standing like that.”

Tim blinks at him. He shuffles back a half-step. “Better?”

“Not really,” Kon says, but he’s smiling again, so Tim doesn’t think he’s really all that worried. After all, he’s Superboy, even if he’s pretending not to be. Tim could leap off this roof if he wanted to. “You’re a bit of a daredevil, you know?”

“If you think I’m bad, wait until you meet my brothers,” Tim says.

“Do they all run around in capes too?” Kon asks, and Tim’s stomach drops. Seemingly unbothered, Kon takes a step back from the edge of the roof and he drops to sit cross-legged. He sets down their stolen dessert haul between them. Tim stays standing up, his heart picking up in his chest. He stares down at Kon.

“What did you say?” he asks. He doesn’t try to check his tone- he knows that it comes out dead flat.

“Er.” Kon actually looks a little on edge. “I sort of… found out?”

Tim feels himself go pale, paler than he’d been. “You what?”

Kon’s fidgeting, his hands twisting nervously in his lap, and for some reason, Tim decides to focus on that instead of the pinched expression on his face. “Remember when there was that fire, and I found you and you were wearing that gas mask, and-”

Ah. “X-ray vision,” Tim says, clipped. Bruce is going to be so mad. “Right.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kon says. His eyes are very wide. “I can usually control it, but I forgot to pull back after the first mask, and then I saw you here, and you came over and-”

“It’s fine,” Tim says absently. His mind is racing. Kon’s living with Luthor right now. That puts Tim at risk- that puts Bruce at risk. Kon’s nice. Kon wouldn’t do that- Tim doesn’t know what Kon would do. They’ve practically just met. He’s wondering if he could get away with shoving Kon off the roof, when-

“I won’t tell anyone, I swear,” Kon says, and he makes an aborted movement, like he’s reaching for Tim’s hand or something, but he pulls back too quickly for Tim to really care. “Seriously. I’ll tell you all of my secret identity stuff, if you want. Then you’ll have leverage.”

“What, the Kents? I already knew that,” Tim says. He blinks. “Wait- leverage?”

“I dunno.” Kon says, his voice pitched up a little higher than normal. “If you wanted to try and blackmail me, or something. Then your identity would be safe.”

Tim is sort of strangely touched by that. “You’d let me blackmail you?”

“If you wanted to,” Kon says. He shrugs helplessly. “I-I mean, either way, I wouldn’t tell anyone, but just if you wanted to be sure.”

Tim takes a deep, heaving breath. He blinks, trying to get his thoughts in order. “You don’t need to let me blackmail you,” he says. “Besides, I already told you. I’m with Batman. I know everything.”

“Right.” Kon scrubs a hand through his hair, mussing it up. “Shit. I’m sorry. I- This was supposed to be a roundabout way of asking to be your friend.”

His eyes are so blue. Tim thinks he’s about to make the worst decision of his entire life. He feels his shoulders drop down from being hunched around his ears. “Yeah, I’ll be your friend,” he says in a breath. “Kind of thought we already were.”

Kon looks at him, and he’s lit up from below by the streetlamps. He’s golden and blue and going to get Tim in so much trouble. “Yeah?” he asks quietly. Tim finds that he has to look away.

“Yeah.”

Tim wavers, before he finally lets himself stoop down to sit at Kon’s side. He’s still flipping through contingencies in the back of his mind, but strangely- and probably stupidly- he feels like he can trust Kon about this.

“So,” he says, after the quiet had stretched out between them, loose and hazy. “How is it, living with Lex Luthor? I didn’t think you’d end up with him, after last time.”

Kon huffs. “I’m sure you’ve been able to read all about it in the news,” he says, though he doesn’t sound as bitter about it as Luthor had. “Honestly, it’s fine. He’s sort of boring.” At Tim’s incredulous expression, he tips his head back and laughs. “Seriously. He’s in a lot of meetings.”

“Planning Superman’s demise?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“But it’s not, like.” Tim shuffles his feet around against the brickwork. He doesn’t know how to word it, in a way that doesn’t give too much away. “He’s not-”

Kon seems to get it. “He’s…trying,” he says. “Before now, my dad - er - Superman, he had full custody. I don’t think Luthor’s ever had to be a guardian of anyone before. But I think,” he pauses, mulling over his words. “I think he wants to be, if that makes sense.”

“Mm,” Tim says. Superman, he supposes, wouldn’t allow this arrangement if he didn’t think that Luthor had changed for the better. Kon picks up a little shortbread cookie from the plate. “... That sort of makes it sound like Luthor and Superman are divorced.”

Kon coughs, sending cookie crumbs flying. “They’re absolutely not,” he says, wiping his mouth. “It’s complicated.”

“Just saying,” Tim says, and he can feel himself starting to grin again. “Do the tabloids know he’s got a custody situationship with another man? That he had another man’s baby? That’s a scandal.”

“Oh my God, shut up,” Kon groans, but he’s smiling again too.

“Are you sure I’m not going to get incinerated in the elevator?” Tim hisses into his phone. From behind the front desk, the receptionist casts a bored look towards him. Tim turns away, debating about pulling his hood back up over his face. It’s just past seven in the morning, and Tim’s sneakers are wet from the rain outside.

“Dude, he literally said I could have people over when I wanted to, it’s fine,” Kon says over the line. He yawns, loud and obnoxious, right into the speaker. “I’ve been rotting away in here for, like, a month now. I need some human interaction.”

“We literally saw each other yesterday,” Tim says. It’d been at a bank robbery, and they hadn’t been able to chat, but Tim’s been pedantic his whole life, and he’s not going to stop now. He eyes the glamorous lobby around him. “I think there are worse places to be held captive than the ritziest apartment complex in Metropolis.”

“You say that because you’ve never had to live with Luthor,” Kon says. “He’s so weird. I don’t think he ever sleeps. Just walks around, plotting. All the time.”

“At least you haven’t woken up to a vivisection,” Tim quips, then immediately bites his tongue, wincing. Thankfully, Kon just laughs.

“Been there, done that enough for one lifetime,” he says. “C’mon. I’ll buzz you up.”

It turns out that ‘buzzing up’ in a building as luxurious as this one was more of a production than Tim had thought. A stern-faced security guard pats him down, then ushers him over to a private elevator in a side hallway. Tim keeps his hands in his pockets.

In the month after their meeting at the gala, Tim had spent more than a little amount of time trying to pick apart the media storm surrounding Lex Luthor and his new ward. Of course, everything was deliberately vague, with enough detail to stir the pot and distract reporters from anything super-related. He’d kept digging, largely just to see how far down Luthor would be able to go to keep Superboy private.

Pretty far, it had turned out. He’d actually enlisted Oracle for help, and she’d been begrudgingly impressed by the total wipe on all things Conner Kent. He still wasn’t totally sold on Luthor’s angle in all of this yet, but after trying to crack his email encryption a few too many times, Bruce had told him to lay off for the moment.

He’d also gotten Kon’s number. Somehow.

Initially, he’d assumed it was for a burner phone, and that their conversations would be for work. He’d been mistaken. As it turned out, Kon is chatty. He asks Tim about his day, every day. He sends photos of sunsets and dogs on the street, and the inside of Lex Luthor’s penthouse. He makes Tim play 8-ball with him, and complains every single time that Tim wins.

And now, he’s trying to get Tim to come visit him in his new place. His new LexCorp place, all the way in the heart of Metropolis. Because apparently damage-control, for Luthor, extended to physically moving Superboy’s base of operations to where he could properly monitor it.

All things had led to Tim taking a train and two buses, on his own, to the middle of a different city at the crack of dawn, in hopes of beating any nosy journalists to the front door. And, maybe, in hopes of avoiding having to talk about going to a supervillain’s home with Bruce. Regardless. Tim straightens his hoodie as best as he can, trying to make himself seem less visibly rained-on.

The elevator stops at the top floor of the building, and the doors slide open smoothly. He is met with a hallway, and at the end of it, a door, flanked by a guard. The woman has a slicked-back ponytail, and looks flatly at Tim with that same dismissive glare that Luthor has perfected. Tim draws himself up and stares right back. He’s in civvies, though, so he isn’t sure how well he manages to pull it off.

“I’m here to see, Kon,” Tim says. “I’m Tim. I’m his friend.” He doesn’t even start to address the whole it’s-the-crack-of-dawn thing.

The guard just stares at him for a long, long moment, before finally waving him through the door. Inside is a gleaming hallway. Tim is almost painfully aware of the scuff marks that his sneakers are going to leave on the smooth, marble floors. He fishes his phone out of his pocket.

TD: hey. in your house. where are you.

Kon doesn’t reply. Tim glares at his phone. Well. There’s only one way forward. Tim steps out of the entranceway and into the hallway. Nothing moves to attack him outright. The penthouse is mostly glass, with huge floor-to-ceiling windows covering the walls. The sparse furniture that happens to be there is minimalistic, almost obnoxiously futuristic in its sleek design. Tim finds that he prefers Gotham’s gothic stylings more than Metropolis’ smooth glass-on-glass.

He makes it through an offensively large living room to the kitchen. It’s sprawling and open-concept. Every single appliance looks like a panel of smooth, black glass. The lights are too bright for there to be shadows to skulk around in. And, to top it all off-

“Oh, hey kiddo.”

He can feel a vein ticking in his forehead. There goes the alibi, he thinks. “Superman,” he says. “You’re here.”

Superman is standing beside the kitchen island, holding a bright blue mug. He’s in his full suit, with his cape draped over one arm, pulling it out of the way. Everything about him looks jarringly out of place in the gleaming cleanliness of Luthor’s penthouse. He’s got what looks like a copy of the Daily Planet spread out on the kitchen island, open to the arts section.

“I’m here,” he says, with a wry little grin, like he gets how absurd all of this is. “Kon-El and I have dinner together on Tuesdays.”

“Hm.” Tim says. He looks pointedly at the LED clock on the microwave, which proudly declares that it is currently seven-fifteen in the morning.

“Would you like some coffee?” Superman asks politely. He seems perfectly content to not ask why Tim’s here in return, which Tim thinks is a little bit disappointing, for a so-called investigative journalist. “I just made a fresh pot.”

Tim hesitates. He’s sort of morbidly curious. “Yeah, thanks,” he says. “That’d be nice.”

He hovers by the corner of the island while Superman gets a mug down from the cabinet and pours him a coffee. “Do you take milk in it?” Superman asks. He squints at the closed door of the refrigerator. “We’ve got whole, oat, and almond.”

“Black is fine,” Tim says, and accepts the mug from Superman. He takes a too-quick sip, and succeeds in scalding the inside of his mouth. Unfortunately, it’s a damn good cup of coffee- knowing Luthor, the beans were probably roasted this morning and air-dropped to his house. He clears his throat. “Is Kon here? He said I could come over, but he’s not texting me back.”

Superman nods thoughtfully. “He’s probably in his room,” he says. “Down the hall, last door on your left.”

“Thanks,” Tim says shortly.

“You know,” Superman muses, “I’m glad he has a friend like you, bud. I’m always worried that he’s lonely.”

Tim tries for a smile and lands for a grimace. Between the two of them, Tim doesn’t think that Kon would be the one that’d be seen as lonely. “Yeah,” he says. “He’s a good guy. It’s nothing on my end.”

He picks up his mug and turns to leave. As if on cue, because nothing in Tim’s life has ever been easy, the doorway is blocked. Luthor, holding a tiny espresso cup in one hand, and a phone in the other, emerges from the hall.

“-that meeting at two, but after that, there’s nothing until Wednesday,” Luthor’s saying into the phone. “No, I can’t make it on Tuesday- well, yes, lunch with my son takes precedence over a meeting with you. I’ve forwarded my availability. Don’t bother me with this again.”

With a sharp motion, he ends the call and slips the phone into a pocket in the sleek, expensive-looking silk robe he’s wearing. He glances offhandedly at Superman, who has gone back to reading the newspaper, but seems largely unsurprised by his presence. Instead, he turns his searching gaze on Tim.

“Does Wayne know that his little ward is traipsing around Metropolis right now?”

Tim blinks. “Er,” he says intelligently. He rocks back on the balls of his feet, and wonders if Superman can hear his heartbeat right now. He absolutely can. There was a gleam in Luthor’s eye that told him that he doesn’t actually need Kryptonian superpowers to see right through him. “He’s fine with it.”

Luthor stares at him. Tim holds himself very still for a long, long moment. Then, Luthor’s icy facade cracks, just a little. He looks almost… nostalgic. “Well, Tim,” he says, “any friend of Conner’s is welcome. I’m glad you made the journey from Gotham to see him.”

“It was no problem,” Tim says.

“If you ever need a lift in the future, you can shout for me,” Superman adds. “Gotham’s pretty far if you’re driving.”

“If you two get hungry later on, just let Mercy know. She’ll put in an order with the chefs for you,” Luthor says, like Superman hadn’t spoken. He hasn’t looked away from Tim since that first little twitch.

“Yeah,” Tim says. He edges out a step towards the door. Luthor steps aside to let him pass. “Thanks.” Luthor nods at him.

“I’ll be out at eight-thirty,” he says. “I’d say not to burn the place down, but I wouldn’t want to give you two any ideas.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Tim replies, and Luthor gives him a thin-lipped little half-smile.

“If you guys do end up burning the place down,” Superman says, “just shout and I’ll come and help. With the burning.”

“Very funny,” Luthor says archly, turning towards him. Superman gives Tim a secret little smile, before he responds to Luthor’s barbs. Tim leaves them and their conversation behind him, still half-reeling from it all.

The hall that Superman had directed him to is just as expansive as the rest of the penthouse, and Tim sticks close to the wall as he walks. There are altogether too many rooms in here, he thinks, especially for a place designed for one person to live in. He tries not to openly stare at any of the open doors as he passes them, but it’s a near thing.

Eventually, he makes it to the last door on the left- it’s ajar. Tim pokes his head in- and Kon’s up in a flash, leaning on the doorframe. Tim doesn’t startle, even with Kon close enough to touch. He’s wearing a soft-looking graphic tee that clings to his pecs to an almost-distracting degree. His hair is rumpled, like he just rolled out of bed.

“Hey,” he says, a little breathless. “I thought I heard another heartbeat. What brings you up here?”

Tim bristles. “I talked to you five minutes ago,” he says. “You said I could come up.”

Kon widens his eyes in a sarcastic little expression. “I did say that, didn’t I?” He rubs a hand down the back of his neck, grinning easily. “I must have fallen back asleep when we hung up.”

“I just made small talk with your parents,” Tim says, edging past Kon to get into his room. “I never want to do that ever again.”

“What, both of them?” Kon asks, and when Tim grimaces at him, he starts laughing. “You’re braver than me.”

“What is Superman even doing here?” Tim asks incredulously, and Kon just shrugs.

“He likes to see what’s going on,” he says unhelpfully. He scoots back into the room and collapses onto the bed. “You can sit on the beanbag, if you want.”

Tim does want. He took two buses before six in the morning to get here, and it’s finally starting to catch up with him. He cradles his half-drunk coffee in both hands, peering around the room.

Kon’s room is a mishmash of posters and clutter. His bed is unmade, and there’s a pile of clothes on his desk chair. The shelves beside his bed are full of comic books, and action figures, which is almost stupidly charming, for a guy who’s almost eighteen. Most of the far wall is glass, big floor to ceiling windows, and all of the other wall space is covered in posters, like they’ve got to make up for it. Everything about it is so drastically different from the rest of the penthouse that it’s almost staggering. Tim mushes himself into a comfortable position in the beanbag.

Kon rolls over onto his stomach, propping his chin up on one hand and staring down at Tim. “So,” he says conversationally. “What do you think?”

“Your decor leaves something to be desired,” he remarks, trying to get a rise out of Kon more than anything, and leans out of the way when Kon tries to swat him on the head. He can’t dodge the TTK, though, and feels a phantom hand rustle through his hair. “Seriously. It feels like a Hot Topic threw up in here.”

“How dare you,” Kon says. “I invite you to my house, and you come in and-”

“You abandoned me to go back to bed!” Tim protests, “Superman is going to tell Bruce I snuck out, and I’m going to get grounded from solo patrolling again.”

“I’m going to get grounded from solo patrolling,” Kon repeats in a nasally voice. He’s making a stupid face. Tim has no idea why he likes him so much.

“Stop that,” he says, and Kon immediately starts repeating that too. “Are you actually six years old?”

“I’m actually three years old, dickhead,” Kon says matter-of-factly, and Tim can’t keep it up any more. He ducks his face down to laugh into his mug.

“You’re so annoying,” Tim groans, and Kon just sighs lazily. He stretches out on the bed, his arms dangling right next to Tim’s face. He looks like a cat in a sunbeam. Tim tries not to stare.

“I’ve got FIFA, if you wanna play,” Kon says eventually. Tim can feel his spine slowly compressing itself into the shape of a shrimp inside of the beanbag. He should get up and stretch.

“Yeah, boot it up,” he says.

Kon is sleeping now, his chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm. Tim drags his gloved hands over his face, and bites back a groan.

They’d been on an op together, snooping around in a series of warehouses that hadn’t seemed right to Tim. When he’d decided on backup, he’d chosen to call Kon first. He wondered, absently, when that choice had become second-nature to him.

The warehouses had been trapped- Tim had been right. What he hadn’t counted on was the trap involving pressurized streams of kryptonite-infused gas. Kon had dropped at Tim’s side, wheezing, and he’d pulled the plug on the whole thing at once.

Now, it was closing in on hour seven of being in the hospital. Kon had gotten stabilized quickly enough, and they’d even managed to get him on some pain meds, but he hadn’t woken up. Tim hasn’t left. Not even when Bruce came by, to glower at him and try and ask him to come back to the Cave. Well. Tim thinks that B can rest easy, knowing that Superman is hovering right alongside Tim. He’d stepped out a few minutes ago, leaving Tim alone to his vigil. Tim can’t remember if he’d said anything.

He glares at Kon’s still, sleeping form, like he might be able to force him back into the land of the living with sheer willpower alone. The machines hooked up to his chest beep softly.

The room itself is at the corner of the building, with big windows on all sides. The biggest one, at the west side of the room, shows the orange-pink of the sunset, gleaming bright against the fallen snow. Tim doesn’t look at it. He doesn’t look at anything except the little furrow in Kon’s brow, present even as he sleeps. The downy-soft curl of his hair, right at his temple. The sliver of his collarbone, visible above the hospital gown. Tim feels sick.

His phone buzzes, again, and he reaches out and puts it on silent. His head is heavy with exhaustion, even with the shitty coffee from the hospital cafeteria. He blinks slowly.

His eyes close, for a moment, then-

A rapid, sharp beeping, and Tim slams back into consciousness with a gasp. Kon is awake. His eyes are wide, almost frantic, pawing at the IV, at the heart monitor with clumsy fingers. Tim half-falls from his chair, closing the distance between them in less than a minute.

He gets his hands on Kon’s, keeping his grip as gentle as he can possibly make it. Kon meets his gaze, but his blue eyes are half-focused and strange. “Hey,” Tim says, and it feels incredibly inadequate. “Hey, buddy. You’re okay.”

“Tim,” Kon says, slow and drowsy-like, fumbling through the letters. Tim can hear his heart monitor beeping away behind them, and tells himself to focus. He takes a deep, slow breath. And another. After a minute, Kon starts to do the same. With what feels like agonizing slowness, he breathes, matching himself to Tim. Tim’s heart clenches- he wants, insanely, to reach into Kon’s chest and push back that panic with his bare hands.

After a long, long moment, Kon settles, falling back against the veritable mountain of pillows behind him. His eyes dart from Tim’s face to the big windows along the back walls.

“You’re good,” Tim says. “Sixth floor. Not underground at all.”

“Not underground.” Kon repeats, a little breathless. He still doesn’t sound entirely lucid. His fingers curl around Tim’s hand, and Tim blinks down at the contact. He’d forgotten he’d reached over at all. “A hospital? I’m in a building?”

“Yeah. Metropolis West General.” Tim says. He hooks a toe around the leg of his chair and drags it over, collapsing back into it. Kon frowns a little, pensive, and Tim taps his fingers against the back of his hand. “I called in an assist from the League, but Superman was in space, so it bounced back to your other dad,” Tim says, dipping into that half-joking tone they use when they’re talking about Luthor. “He flew you back to Metropolis.”

“Superman?” Kon asks. He’s still slurring a little, and his pupils look constricted. “Dad?”

“Oh- uh. Luthor,” Tim says. Kon’s not really awake enough to be joking yet, he guesses. “He took charge easily enough.”

“Ah.” Kon taps absently at Tim’s hand. Tim keeps taking those slow, steady breaths for Kon.

“Yeah.” Tim clears his throat. “Honestly, though, he’s got contingencies for days. I was almost impressed. He even made some sort of Kryptonian-specific form of morphine. That’s what you’re on now, if you’re feeling a bit loopy.”

“Okay,” Kon says. He doesn’t really seem to register all of that. Instead, he lifts his free hand to put it on top of Tim’s, making a little hand-sandwich situation. The pressure of his grip is distracting. “What time’s it?”

“Almost nine,” Tim says. “We got you in at two-thirty.”

Kon’s eyes go comically wide. He squeezes Tim’s hand, grip bordering just shy of too-tight. Not that Tim would have let go of him first, but. His voice is suddenly very wobbly. “Why’re you here? Buddy?”

Tim stares at him. He drags a hand through his hair. “You almost died?” he says, voice lilting up at the end of his sentence. “Why would I not be here?”

Kon gives him a weak attempt at a horizontal shrug. “Thought you’d have Bat-stuff to do,” he says. He reaches a hand out of the mess of their tangled fingers, and reaches out for Tim’s wrist, holding with light pressure. He is so warm. “I don’t want you to have Bat-homework. But ‘m happy to see you, buddy.”

“Thanks,” Tim said dryly. Kon looked back up at the ceiling, and started humming a tune. “They’ve got you on the good stuff. Maybe you’re finally feeling it, now that you’ve had time to calm down.”

“I’m feeling great,” Kon said empathetically. He looks back over at Tim. “And you’re here, and that’s great too.”

“I’m flattered,” Tim says blandly, but can’t quite stop himself from looking down to where Kon’s still holding on to him. His hand is so big that it dwarfs Tim’s wrist. He’s strong enough to snap Tim’s arm in two, but he doesn’t. He’s so gentle. “Do you want any water?”

“Nah,” Kon says. “I’m so good.” He slumps back against the pillows. “I think I’m on drugs right now,” he says, matter-of-fact. For the first time in about seven hours, Tim finds himself able to crack a smile.

“You’re on so much drugs,” Tim confirms, and Kon’s eyebrows raise. His expression is so stupid. Tim thought, panicked, back at the warehouse, that he’d never see Kon make a face like that ever again.

“We should get you some drugs too,” Kon says. He smiles. “Drugs are great.”

“I’m good.”

“I also,” Kon says, his voice trembling with exertion, “want a peanut butter cup.”

Tim blinks at him. Kon’s thumb is stroking gently over his pulse point, and Tim’s brain keeps getting caught on that. “You what?”

“Peanut,” Kon says, drawing out the vowels, “butter cup. I want one.” He turns to gaze up at Tim, big blue eyes wide. “Would you get me one?”

I would get you anything, Tim thinks. He heaves a breath. “Yeah,” he says. “Whatever you want, man.”

It’s a production to disentangle himself from Kon’s hands, but he does, even when Kon complains sleepily about it. He stands, hovering at the door. “I’m going to get Superman, if I can find him,” Tim says, and with all the gravitas he usually puts into swearing an oath; “And I’ll get your peanut butter cup too.”

“You’re so nice,” Kon smiles, and Tim lets that carry him out into the hall.

It’s empty- like, really empty out there. There’s a nurse station at the end of the hall with a cluster of people in scrubs, but no vending machine, and no Superman. Tim tugs his cape up around his shoulders, like Batman does, and skirts around them, keeping to the shadows. He doesn’t feel like talking, not with civilians right now.

There are a few people in the rooms, but they all seem busy enough, so Tim leaves them. Besides that, most of the halls he passes are empty, and the people he does see are all nurses or doctors. No patients. He turns the corner, and is met with another clean, blank hallway of the hospital. Sighing through his teeth, Tim keeps moving.

He’s on the verge of going down a floor when one of the rooms catches his eye- a flash of blue, through the little window in the door. Superman.

Through the window in the door, Tim can see into the room. It’s a patient’s room, but clearly empty aside from its current occupants. Luthor sits in a chair at the side of the bed. His suit jacket is discarded rather carelessly on the mattress, and his shirtsleeves are rolled up to his elbows.

He’s talking quietly to Superman, who stands at his shoulder. His expression is concealed from this angle, face angled down at Luthor. Luthor tilts his head up, meeting Superman’s gaze.Tim can’t help but stop, can’t help but stare. Luthor’s face was weary, lined, and as ragged as Tim had ever seen him. There was a palpable weight in their quietness, in the way that Superman reached out to take Luthor’s hand in his own.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Luthor is saying, and unlike his appearance, his voice is sharp, polished steel. It’s not, Tim thinks. It’s mine. “There was no way for you to get there in time, and if you had-”

“I heard him,” Superman says. His voice wavers. “I heard him call out, and I wasn’t there fast enough. If I’d-”

“If you’d have gotten there in time, you both would have gotten hit,” Luthor says firmly. His grip is white-knuckled on Superman’s hand, a clear enough tell that Tim is surprised that Luthor allows himself it. He runs his hand over his skull, drops it down into his lap as he sighs wearily. “The last thing I need is to lose both of you.”

His voice, so meticulously even, almost threatens to tremble. “He’s not lost,” Superman says. He sounds like he’s having trouble believing it himself. “I’m not.”

“No,” Luthor says softly. There is quiet between them, for a moment. He clears his throat, the sound almost noisy in the silence. “I didn’t expect to have him in my life at all. But now that I have had the chance- the thought of losing this, so soon after having it at all-”

“Lex,” Superman says, and there’s a note of something raw in his voice. Tim tries to crane his neck to see through the glass, and as he does, his shoulder knocks against the doorframe. Luthor pauses.

“We have a guest, it seems,” he says, and lets go of Superman to fix his mussed appearance. He stands, shrugs back into his jacket, and when he turns, his expression is placid, almost unnervingly calm. Superman just stays where he is, looking down. Luthor looks expectant, and Tim opens the door, feeling caught. “Red Robin,” Luthor says briskly. Tim feels disarmed at the force of his stare. “What is it?”

“It’s- Kon’s awake.” Tim says, and just like that, it feels like a breath has been let out, a weight has been lifted. Superman finally looks up, and his eyes are bright and blue. Luthor looks at Superman for a long, quiet moment. Tim exhales shakily. “He’s woozy, but aware. No signs of concussion, but I didn’t really check,” he admits. “He asked me for a peanut butter cup.”

Luthor stills. He gives Tim a long, considering look, before his breath leaves him in a short, choppy exhale. “A peanut butter cup,” he repeats, and the words sound almost comical coming from his mouth. Tim finds that he’s tired enough to laugh at Luthor’s disgruntled expression. Luthor doesn’t properly smile, because Tim doesn’t really believe he has the muscular capacity to do so, but his expression softens, ever so slightly. He looks down, straightens his cuffs. “I’ll see what we can do about that.”

“I can get it,” Tim says. “Just. Thought you’d want to know.”

“Thanks, Tim,” Superman says, and when he finally moves, it feels like watching a statue come to life. He crosses the room, rests a heavy hand on Tim’s shoulder. “I’m going to go and see him. You’re welcome to come back to the room, or I can fly you back to Gotham, if-”

“I’m coming back,” Tim says automatically. It’s not even a question. Superman gives him a little smile, like he hadn’t expected anything else.

“Alright,” he says, and, with a last look towards where Luthor is standing by the bed, he leaves.

Luthor is quiet for a moment. He’s looking over Tim’s shoulder, at the empty space where Superman was. Tim shuffles his feet, and Luthor’s grey gaze flicks over to him in a millisecond. It’s still blunter than what it usually is.

“Alright,” Luthor says, echoing Superman. “I suppose we’re off to find some candy?”

Tim blinks. Does this count as working with the enemy, he wonders. “Yep,” he says.

He follows Luthor into the hallway, and all the way down and around, to a little nook that Tim hadn’t even noticed on his first walk-through. He stays a few paces behind him, just out of arm’s reach- a Bat’s instincts are hard to shake. They stop in front of a battered-looking vending machine. Luthor pulls a sleek-looking wallet from his pocket.

“I don’t carry small bills,” Luthor says blandly, brandishing a crisp fifty. According to the sign, a peanut-butter cup costs about two fifty. The machine spits the bill back out. Tim sighs, and starts rummaging around in his pockets for loose change.

He manages to scrounge up a handful of quarters from one of his belt’s pockets and starts to feed it into the machine. Luthor watches on, his expression distant.

“Why aren’t there any other patients in here?” Tim asks him. The peanut butter cup begins its slow descent from the slot in the machine. “Did you rent out this floor, or something?”

Luthor makes a quiet noise, almost a scoff. It brings him back from wherever he’d been, in any case. “Please,” he says. “I own this hospital. When there needs to be an empty floor, I make it so.”

“That’s totally not a supervillain thing to say,” Tim replies dryly. He’s tired enough that his filter is totally shot. For his part, Luthor doesn’t look particularly ready to charge up a death ray to point at his head. “Did you dump all the emergency room patients into the harbour?”

Luthor doesn’t overtly roll his eyes at that, but it’s a near thing. He lowers his voice, just a little- not that there’s anyone around to eavesdrop. “There are rarely patients on this floor,” he says. “I keep it reserved for incidents involving certain costumed individuals I find myself constantly bothered by.”

Tim stares. Luthor adjusts the cuffs of his sleeves, looking down. “It’s easier on everyone involved if there aren’t any prying eyes where there shouldn’t be. All of my medical staff know better than to talk.”

He stoops to retrieve the peanut butter cup package from the vending machine, and holds it out expectantly. Tim takes it, blinking. “You have a secret, superhero-only floor in a hospital that you own?” he asks. “What’s the catch?”

Luthor manages to pull up a half-smirk. He pivots, shiny dress shoes on the floor, and starts walking back in the direction of Kon’s room. Tim has to jog a little to keep up with him. “I understand the hesitation,” he says. “It’s a recent development.”

“What do you get out of it?” That trained, old, suspicion dogs Tim’s words.

“A living son, I suppose,” Luthor says. His expression is utterly unreadable. “I’m not experimenting on him, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

“I-” Tim trails off. He thinks of Luthor’s white-knuckled grip on Superman’s hand. “I wasn’t suggesting that.”

In response, Luthor just looks at him, brief and almost amused. “I can’t fault you for the concern, in any case,” he says. “If anything, I’m relieved to hear that someone still remembers that I’m evil.”

And there’s something in the way he says evil, like it’s a joke flying over Tim’s head. His posture, deliberately loose and unaffected. Tim thinks that he can see the fraying edges of where he’s sewn himself together.

But they’ve reached the door to Kon’s room. Luthor hangs back, lets Tim go first. Inside, Kon’s propped up against the pillows. Superman sits at his side, and they are both bathed in the dying sunlight from the windows. Tim knocks his fist against the doorframe, halfheartedly, and Kon turns to look.

“Peanut butter delivery,” Tim says lamely, and Kon’s face breaks out into a blinding, heart-wrenching smile. Over his shoulder, Tim can hear Luthor make a quiet, almost unnoticeable sound, like he’s been punched in the gut.

“Hey, there you are,” Kon says. He looks halfway back to falling asleep, and Tim aches at the sight of him. “I missed you.”

Tim blinks awake to a ringing ache in his temples, the uncomfortable sensation of his hands being bound behind his back, and the knowledge that he is in some deep shit.

Thankfully, he’s only cuffed, and finds that he’s able to roll over onto his back. His mouth tastes like iron and bile, and the movement only brings another swell of nausea up from his stomach. He tries to force down a gag, and succeeds in not puking all over his jeans. He’s in civvies, which makes him grimace. It’s an unneeded challenge, but one that he supposes he’ll have to deal with.

First and foremost, he needs to have an understanding of his surroundings, says the little voice in the back of his head that sounds a lot like Bruce. Alright. He heaves himself up to a sitting position, ignoring the way it made nausea roll in his stomach. The last thing he remembers is the elevator down from Kon’s place- he’d slept over again, and was leaving too early. He’s still wearing the hoodie he’d snagged off of the floor. There’s a bloodstain on the collar- he wonders, absurdly, if Kon will be upset by it.

The walls of his cell are a black-grey metallic substance, but there are gaps between the bars. Not even a force-field. Score. His hands are bound behind his back, but his fingers are free, which is a start. His ankles aren’t even bound. His head hurts, though- he must have gotten hit at some point, but he was lucid at the very least. And-

“Good, you’re awake.”

Tim looks up. From the cell across the little hall from him, is Luthor, of all people. He looks, frankly, like shit, with his suit in ragged disarray, and a sluggishly bleeding gash across his bald head. He’s staring over at Tim with a slightly furrowed brow.

“What,” Tim says flatly, “the fuck.”

“Agreed,” Luthor says crisply. He raises an eyebrow at Tim. “Is your head alright? I need to know if I’ll be responsible for excess weight, when I break out of here.”

“I’m fine,” Tim says instinctively. His temples are throbbing, but it’s not pressing. “What the hell is going on?”

“Well, from the looks of it, we’ve been kidnapped,” Luthor says dryly. “I assume the motive is either ransom or bait, depending. I haven’t seen the kidnappers yet, so I’ll assume that we’re not here to be immediately killed.”

“Great. If they’re going for ransom, they could’ve taken only one of us,” Tim says. “I’m connected to Wayne Enterprises, and you’re worth, like, a billion dollars on your own.”

“Five billion, actually,” Luthor replies absently. “And yes, your inclusion in this plot makes me wonder what their angle is. Capturing the ward of Bruce Wayne was an odd choice, especially if they’ve already managed to capture me.”

“Hey, dickhead,” Tim says, a little indignant. “People try to kidnap me all the time, actually. I’m worth kidnapping.”

Luthor looks unimpressed. “Oh, I’m sure.” For a brief, infuriating moment, Tim understands with frightening clarity, how Bruce manages to get into an argument with him every single time their paths cross. “But regardless, you were in Metropolis at the time, so we’ll have to assume you’re collateral.”

Tim settles for making a face at him. Luthor doesn’t seem to care.

“Then,” he continues, “I’m afraid that we’ve been kidnapped to lure someone to our rescue.” He looked faintly disgusted at the prospect. “A trap for the Kryptonian, perhaps. I can’t think of anyone else I’ve helped recently.”

“They’d pick you as bait for that?” Tim asks, keeping the red light of the security camera in the corner of his eye. “No offence, Luthor, but I feel like they’d usually go for a sympathetic innocent.”

Luthor, for his part, doesn’t seem particularly offended. He settles in what Tim would think of as a recline, if it weren’t for the way that his wrists were bound. “Superman will come,” he says, with the affect of someone saying that the sky is blue. A simple, undeniable law of the universe. “He’d come for the worst criminals in the world, if they needed him.”

“And?” Tim asks. He can’t help himself. “Do you think we’ll need him?”

Luthor gives him a truly villainous smile. “I don’t think we will.” He eyes Tim through the bars, and Tim feels a frisson of nervousness spin down his spine. He wonders if Bruce has sent out the red-alert yet.

“Do you think they’ve gotten any Kryptonite, if this really is a trap?”

Luthor lifts one shoulder in a lazy shrug. He didn’t seem all too concerned. “If they could find any that I don’t already own. I own nearly all of the known quantities of the solid rock, and both gaseous and liquid forms have become exceedingly rare since January.” Since the incident in the warehouse, Tim thinks. He hadn’t known that Luthor had been behind the shrinking Kryptonite black market in the aftermath. “They wouldn’t have been able to steal it from my stores - comparatively, kidnapping me is small fry.”

“Hm,” Tim says. He decides that he isn’t going to think about the implications of that. “Well, I guess we’re not sticking around long enough to find out?”

“Quite.”

While the kidnappers had managed to relieve him of his phone, and wallet, they hadn’t done a full-body search. Grinning, Tim fishes out a pair of bobby pins from his left sock and starts bending them into a misshapen lock pick. “Do you know how to pick a lock?” he asks, and Luthor scoffs.

“Please,” he says. Tim distinctly hears the sound of metal scraping against metal. “I practically invented these cuffs.”

Alright, then. They work in methodical near-silence for a minute. There’s a tiny camera in the hall, with two lenses, pointed at each of the cells. Tim can only assume it’s projecting live, likely with audio to go with it. He twists his body away, like Luthor’s doing, and begins his work.

Tim’s hands don’t shake as he presses back the pins of the lock. Clearly, despite the high-tech nature of their prison, they weren’t expecting their captives to be anything other than rich and dull. Still, he thinks it’ll take him a minute to get free of the bonds.

“Do you think,” Tim says eventually, breaking the silence. Luthor hums, only half-listening. “Do you think that they could know about- about Kon?” It feels like a confession, when he says; “I was with him that morning.”

There’s a click of metal, and Luthor’s cuffs fall to the ground with a clatter. “I had hoped that it wasn’t the case,” he says. His voice is deliberately neutral. “If they did, it would explain taking both of us.”

“Bait for the Kryptonian,” Tim repeats. “Just not Superman.” He frowns. Tim knows Kon- has built up a mental archive of him in the months of working at his side- he knows that this trap would work on him. Kon’s soft heart is his biggest weakness- and it’s one that he wears on his sleeve.

“There are contingencies in place among my staff for if I’m ever kidnapped,” Luthor says. He’s on his feet now, reaching between the bars for the wires leading down from the camera. “They do not involve Kon in any capacity. If this is to be a trap, then it should not close on him. Not if Superman can do what I’ve asked of him.”

Tim scoffs- he can’t help it. “Do you really think that Kon would agree to stay out of it, if people he cares about are missing?”

“It’s not about what Kon agrees to,” Luthor says pointedly. “It’s about keeping him safe. My staff- and yes, Superman- will do whatever it takes to keep him from harm. I have explicitly told them so.”

Tim stares. Luthor fiddles with the wires. Something sparks beneath his touch. “I don’t get it,” he says.

“Really?” Luthor asks. “It’s a simple propulsion lock, Timothy, I would have thought you’d have seen them before.”

“What? No, I meant- I know that. Don’t be obtuse,” Tim says. “I meant about you and Kon, a-and him. ”

Luthor grimaces. “I can only assume that you’re asking me this now, when there’s no way for me to walk away from you.”

“I mean, it doesn’t hurt,” Tim says. “But seriously, you can’t expect me not to be curious.”

“I could expect a little more decorum from one of Bruce Wayne’s children,” Luthor says loftily. He sighs. “I don’t know that I could, actually, knowing that man.”

Tim lets it slide. “I just don’t understand how you could just decide to get over half a decade of trying to kill him in a couple months. Is it some long-winded plan to kill him?” He feels like he’s on the verge of cracking something open, and that honed detective sense in the back of his mind keeps telling him to push, push, push. “Is it for Kon?”

There is a long silence. Tim can’t clearly see Luthor’s face. He’s halfway to regretting even asking, when Luthor clears his throat. “My father,” he says, eventually, “was not a good man. He was everything that I am, but worse.” Luthor chuckles humourlessly. “I know that’s difficult to imagine, but he really was.”

The camera’s red light flickers off in a blink. Luthor looks into its black, empty lens. “I once thought the Luthor name was a curse,” he says. “With Conner, I didn’t want it to be. I wanted- I want him to have what I didn’t.” He sighs. “If he ended up like me, it would be a waste.”

“That’s got to be the most you’ve ever disparaged yourself in my presence,” Tim says. “Maybe ever.”

“Well,” Luthor says dryly, brandishing the useless wires in his freed hands, “who’s there to hear me? My father’s probably turning in his grave. Good.”

“What happened to him?” Tim asks, despite the sinking feeling in his stomach. Luthor’s expression is difficult to look at head-on.

“He’s buried in Metropolis,” Luthor says blandly. “Clark never forgave me for it, even if I think he understood.”

Tim doesn’t think Clark’s objecting to the gravesite. “Clark knew him?”

“Clark knows a lot more about me than he’s ever let slip,” Luthor says. His smile is almost wry. “We met long before any of this. I wasn’t his enemy, not at first.”

“You lived in Smallville,” Tim says, thinking back to the file he’d read through. Luthor nods.

“I hated that town. My father only sent me there as a punishment. But Clark- well. Clark was good at making the best out of a bad situation.” His tone is remote, distant. Luthor is not looking at Tim. “He was the only real friend I’d ever had,” he says. “Being in his presence, it was like being bathed in the light of the sun.”

Tim thinks, in the moment, of Kon, and finds that he can’t think of anything to say.

Luthor tilts his head, almost pensive. “Of course, that’s not to say that we agreed on much of anything, even then. Our differences only multiplied with time. Why do you think he’s thrown himself into destroying everything I care to build? He knows that, historically speaking, I’m not one to be trusted with precious things.”

“But-”

“But, if Clark truly thought that I shouldn’t be trusted with Conner, I’d never have been allowed in his presence, let alone as his guardian.” Luthor says. “The extent of our current relationship is built upon that foundation.” His tone has a note of finality in it. “That is all there is to understand.”

He moves to the cell door. Tim doesn’t say anything, just thinks over the words in his mind. “I trust you’re almost done with those handcuffs?”

“Yeah,” Tim says, and they fall from his wrists in the next moment. His mind is elsewhere, and it’s clear that Luthor’s is too, but there’s no time. “How long do we have before they come in to check about the camera feed?”

“Not long, if they’re worthy kidnappers,” Luthor replies, and Tim sets about getting the door to his cell open. It’s an easier pick than the cuffs, and before he knows it, he’s crouched by the door at the end of the hall, Luthor at his back. It’s a testament to these past months that he doesn’t startle at having him there.

Luthor cuts ahead of him once they make it out of the room. Tim tries to protest, because hey, only one of them is a trained vigilante, but Luthor just ignores him. There’s a duo of guards at the end of the hall, but they’re talking, hands away from the trigger guards. They don’t even hear the door open. Idiots.

Luthor’s got his cuffs in hand, curled around his fist like he intends to use them as a weapon. Tim’s used to the villainous figure that Luthor cuts- he’d been trained on him as much as he’d been trained on any of the rogues of Gotham- but that man had been polished, regarding the chaos he’d created from afar, well away from Superman and his justice.

Now, Tim watches him punch a guard in the jaw, hard enough to send him sprawling. Tim’s on the other man in a second, delivering a kick to the back of his knee, and bringing him down with a blow to the temple. Luthor stands, taking the pistol from the unconscious guard’s hand, and straightens. There is a single moment when Tim is absolutely convinced that Luthor will shoot the guard in the head.

It passes.

Luthor tucks the pistol away, and straightens the cuffs of his ruined shirt. He turns back to Tim.

“Take his gun,” Luthor tells him, and Tim blinks. “Even if you don’t know how to fire it, it’s one less weapon in their hands, and one more in ours.”

“I know how to shoot a gun,” Tim says defensively. He does. It’s just… been a while.

“I hope you won’t have to prove it, with the way you sound now,” Luthor says, and retrieves a comm from one of the guards’ bodies. “Now. I think we should be able to neutralize everyone else before Superman gets here.” He sounds- Tim would call it excited, on anyone else. “What do you think?”

Tim can’t help it. His fingers tighten around the gun. “I think I can do that.”

Thirty two minutes later, a giant hole is ripped in the side of the building, revealing a swath of robin’s-egg-blue sky, and the brilliant red of Superman’s cape. Kon’s at his side, and the midday sun engulfs them in a near-blinding glow. Tim’s heart skips- even though they’ve been alright since the very start. Luthor looks up from where he’s reclining in one of the kidnappers’ desk chairs.

“You’re late,” he says casually. Superman drops down at his side, expression complicated.

Tim doesn’t have time to say anything, because he’s busy being tackled off of his feet by a blur of blue and red. Kon lifts him off his feet, spins in a circle. He’s holding Tim just shy of too-tight, and he’s warm and the leather of his jacket is right in Tim’s face. He’s talking too fast for Tim’s tired mind to keep up.

“I’m fine,” he says, and Kon just hugs him tighter. “Put me down, weirdo.”

“I thought you were hurt,” Kon whispers, and he doesn’t sound alright. He’s hiding his face in Tim’s hair. “They didn’t leave a note, I thought- I thought-”

Tim shushes him, and manages to get an arm free to hug him back. “Have a little faith,” he says, as gentle as he can make it. “I wouldn’t do that to you.” Kon starts talking again, and Tim slides his hand up, cupping the back of Kon’s skull. “We kicked ass on our own. No deaths, no serious injuries for anyone. Promise.”

Kon sets him back on the ground, but he doesn’t step back very far. He shakes his head, a little disbelieving. “I know,” he says, takes a breath, “I just- I was worried. We all were.” And behind him, climbing through the hole in the wall, Tim sees Bruce, full cape and cowl, even in the daytime. Bruce catches Tim’s eye, and starts to move very quickly in his direction.

“I should-” Tim says, at the same time that Kon says, “Oh, I-”

They stop, and Tim sways a little on his feet. He’s suddenly a lot more tired than he felt ten minutes ago. Kon steadies him with a hand on his elbow. “You go first,” he says.

“I should go talk to Batman,” Tim says, and Kon nods.

“See you- soon?” he says, that little hopeful glint back in his eye.

“I’ll call,” Tim tells him, and Kon leaves him with one last embrace.

Tim watches him go. Luthor is standing at the far side of the room, near where they’d dumped the unconscious bodies of their captors. Superman is at his side, hovering a half-inch off of the ground, and a half-inch too-close for professional courtesy. They turn in sync when Kon approaches, Superman with a warm smile, and Luthor with the softest sort of smirk Tim thinks he’s capable of.

That smirk melts into a quiet, delicate expression when Kon pulls him into a hug of his own. Tim averts his eyes.

And Batman is there in between blinks, taking up most of Tim’s field of view. He checks Tim’s head, his pupils, even the little scrapes on his arms from the cuffs. And, because somehow there’s not been enough sappiness in his face for one day, he wraps his arms around Tim. His gauntlets scrape a little. Tim doesn’t care.

“I said I was fine, B,” Tim complains, and Bruce just grunts at him. He rolls his eyes, but hugs his dad right back.

Kon is a warm weight along Tim’s entire front. He’s mouthing lazily at the underside of Tim’s jaw, his big hands splayed along the side of his hip. They’re mostly-clothed, which is rather unusual for the two of them, all things considered, but Tim finds that he’s perfectly content to just lay here and let Kon keep doing whatever the hell he wants.

They’re sprawled out on Kon’s bed in the penthouse, because obviously, the Manor is a no-go, and it’s miles bigger than his little twin at the farm, and, unlike Superman, Tim’s about ninety-percent sure that Luthor both doesn’t have superhearing and doesn’t care to pry into what his son is doing with his maybe-boyfriend.

That being said, Luthor does have a bit of a taste for security cameras. And bugs. Tim’s seen his eight-monitor setup, in the office, broadcasting too many camera feeds to follow, during one of his snoop-arounds of the place. Maybe he should have swept Kon’s room for bugs before all of this-

“What’re you thinking about,” Kon murmurs, warm against his pulse, and Tim draws his hand up to curl his fingers in the thick hair at the back of his head. “I can tell you’re thinking right now.”

“You know, most of us actually think all the time,” Tim says, because saying your dad’s weird technology obsession probably isn’t the move here. “I know it’s sort of a rarity for you-”

“Alright,” Kon cuts in, sarcastic as a knife, and he gets his hands under Tim, uses it to flip him down onto the mattress. He kisses the corner of Tim’s mouth, searing hot. “You’re such a dick.”

“Yeah,” Tim says, smiling into the next one. “You love it.”

“I put up with it,” Kon replies, but he’s got that look in his eyes that means that Tim is totally right. “You’re lucky you’re hot-”

He pauses. His eyes dart to the side, and Tim looks up at him, furrowing his brow. “Yeah, hot enough for you to pay attention to me,” he says, and Kon has the actual audacity to put a hand over his mouth. “What the fuck,” Tim says, muffled by his palm.

“I think my dad’s home,” Kon says, and Tim tries not to roll his eyes, because seriously, Luthor’s evil and annoying and all, but he’s never really seemed to care that much about Kon’s personal relationships, beyond ensuring that no one was actively trying to kill him. Even then.

Kon’s face screws up in annoyance, and he groans. “Oh fuck, it’s both of them,” he says, and Tim sighs. They should’ve taken their chances with the farmhouse.

“Shit,” he agrees.

Kon rolls over, freeing Tim to sit up and start hustling back into his sweater. “I’m sorry,” Kon says, and Tim just waves him off. He’s already gotten the talk from both Bruce and Dick, with the latter being infinitely more awkward. The actual last thing he needs right now is to have to deal with a clumsy sex-ed lesson from fucking Superman.

He pulls on his boots, doesn’t even bother to lace them up. “Should I try and make a break for the elevator?” Kon bites his lip, deliberating. Tim almost trips over that damn beanbag chair trying to find his other shoe.

“You know, there’s a secret tunnel that loops back through Lex’s office and back out to the roof,” Kon supplies, and crosses the room to fumble with some of the buttons on his desk. “He’s super paranoid about having shit like that, and it’s lead-lined, so you’ll be good on the Superman front. You’ve just gotta get in through the closet.”

“Nice,” Tim says, and makes a mental note to try and map the tunnels as he goes because hey, you could never have too many secret-passageway schematics.

Kon hustles him past his haphazardly-hanging clothes towards the back wall of the closet, where a panel smoothly slides to the side at his touch. It reveals a tight, dark passageway, nearly flush with the wall. Tim wonders how he could have missed it.

“Dude,” he says, voice tinged with awe, and Kon makes a face. “Holy crap.”

“I know, he’s so weird,” he says, and Tim whacks him on the arm.

“I can’t believe you’ve never told me about your secret anti-Superman passage before,” he admonishes. Kon sighs. “This is incredible. Does he have these on every floor? How did he get them constructed in secret?”

“This is exactly why I didn’t tell you,” he says, and presses a warm hand to the small of Tim’s back, ushering him in. “I’ll call you tonight,” he promises, and bends down to press a soft, closed-mouth kiss to Tim’s lips. Tim engages in an amount of restraint that honestly deserves an award when he doesn’t wrap his arms around Kon’s neck and drag him down all over again.

“See you around,” he says when they part. Kon gives him a look, all blue eyes and dark, curling hair.

“Have fun sneaking past my dads,” Kon says with a smile, and slides the panel closed after him.

Tim has a copy of the publicly available blueprints for the residential building of LexCorp on his phone, because he’s not an amateur. That being said, he’s unsurprised by the sheer number of discrepancies between what the plans say and what this tunnel is revealing. Still, he keeps it open to reference as he creeps down the passage.

It’s a thin, narrow path, evidently intended for last-minute evacuations. The lights barely work, and Tim honestly can’t tell whether it’s because of a lack of maintenance or Luthor’s weird taste in aesthetics. Still, he tracks himself loosely through the blueprints, as he slips past Kon’s room. There’s a stretch of hallway ahead, and then the passageway passes Luthor’s office before it meets a ladder leading up to the rooftop.

He’s past the hallway unscathed, when he pauses. Faintly, he can hear muffled voices from up ahead. He slows to a crawl, and only just refrains from pressing his ear to the wall. He’s right up next to Luthor’s office, or he must be, because that’s gotta be Luthor.

Thankfully, Luthor must be as nosy as Tim is, because these tunnels seem to be perfect for eavesdropping. Tim slows his gait.

“-so stubborn, I swear to God.” That was definitely Luthor, all dismissive and haughty. “Would it have even crossed your mind that I was using the legal channels?”

“Legal channels? I don’t think you can be making weapons like that anywhere, legally.” And that was Superman. Tim doesn’t think he’s ever even heard him use that tone of voice with anyone else. This was definitely going to be good.

There’s the sound of shuffling, of glass clinking. Luthor lets out this short little hiss of breath. “If I had a dollar for every time you accused a piece of my technology that you didn’t understand of being some sort of death ray, I’d be a god-damn trillionaire. You can’t really be this stupid, Clark.”

Tim’s eyebrows raised. Luthor’s back in death rays? “Explain it to me,” Superman challenged, his voice like steel. “I’ll hear you out.”

“Like you heard me out when I told you that those labs were for medical research?” Luthor says haughtily. “You tore a hole in the roof of that building. I’ve got reporters crawling up my ass about it- thanks for that, by the way.”

“If you can definitively tell me that everything in there has a permit, I’ll make a public statement,” Superman says. Luthor is notably quiet for a long, long moment.

“The purpose is well-intentioned, even if I had to stretch the legality of things,” Luthor says evenly. “I will tell you that nothing in that building was meant to harm anyone else.”

“Yeah?” Superman says. “That’s a crime. Just like death rays are a crime.”

“They’re microscopes,” Luthor spits. “You see any piece of machinery with my name on it and assume the worst.”

“I wouldn’t assume the worst if it wasn’t often the case,” Superman argues. “Show me the plans.”

There’s some more shuffling, stuff that Tim can’t quite make out. When Luthor speaks again, he sounds closer than before. “You couldn’t keep up with the basic schematics,” he says coolly. “I’m not doing charity work here.”

There was something in his tone that Tim didn’t quite get.

“Oh,” Superman says, and his voice is lower, nothing like that Man-of-Steel thing he has going on with the reporters. Tim narrows his eyes. “I can keep up.”

“We’ll see about that,” Luthor purrs, and then several things click into place in Tim’s mind all at once. He inhales sharply, then slaps a hand over his mouth. From the other side of the door, there’s a wet, soft sound that Tim desperately tries not to think about. A moment of silence. From the other side of the wall, Luthor keeps talking, voice threaded with something molten and dangerous. “Death rays, really? I’d have thought you’d- mmh- you’d assume they were nuclear bombs.”

Superman lets out this short hum, and there’s more shuffling, and honestly, Tim should have been on that goddamn rooftop about five minutes ago. There’s a clatter, like everything on Luthor’s desk just got pushed aside. Tim feels a bit like he’s watching a car crash.

“The full lecture will have to keep until tonight. I’ve got some business to attend to,” Luthor says, and his voice is smoke and liquid and ew. “If you can stand to wait that long.”

“I’ll live,” Superman replies. Pacing, quiet, then- “I’ll see you tonight, Lex.” Tim hears the door shut. He breathes a quiet sigh of relief. He can see the ladder, and it’s only a few floors to the top, and then he can go home and never think about this moment ever again. In the office, Luthor clears his throat deliberately.

Tim freezes.

“In the future,” Luthor drawls, “try to keep to the public hallways when you’re in my buildings, Bat-spawn. I can never seem to remember which of the traps are active at any given time.”

Tim doesn’t really think that Luthor will kill him, but he doesn’t particularly want to stick around to find out. “Let this be a lesson,” Luthor says. And then, dismissive as ever; “That is all.”

Tim makes it out to the roof in less than a minute.