#And... I feel the madness settling in that came about with revelations regarding the Nightmares and for the first time since

[blackvahana]

SItting here thinking "Wow. suddenly all that practice w bb pcp things has come back"

nms shut up. also why did youtube pull the "are you still watching?" as soon as I hit the screenshot button

[obscure-sentimentalist]

“You can stop pretending to be tough now. It’s just me.” - Merlyn Boys, any au you feel like it :) they are all amazing! And this prompt list is like 90% Merlyn Boys material hahaha it was really hard to pick just one.

From this prompt list

(Thank you, anon! Not sure if you’re the same anon who’s submitted a few other prompts previously, or if there are a few of you: either way, I appreciate your enjoyment of these boys!!!)

From a new AU, whose creation can be credited to @absentlyabbie after talking about some variations on this theme. We’ll see how this first outing goes.

“You can stop pretending to be tough now. It’s just me.”

Connor fights the And that’s why I need to be tough that instinctively wants to rise up and instead blows out an exaggerated breath, unfolding his arms from what was apparently a very “tough-guy” stance.

Given the meeting out of which he’d just walked (and then had to wait an additional ten minutes for Tommy to get free from), it would make sense.

“Well, that went… swimmingly,” he quips, but seeing as he’s not the twin who’s so blessed in that department, the comment takes off like a limply-thrown paper plane that dips into an immediate nosedive.

Tommy claps a supportive hand on his back before reaching over to smack the Down arrow. “I think it went as well as it could have gone, given the circumstances,” he counters. “I mean, we figured it wasn’t going to be a warm welcome, because it’s Dad, but we’ve ensured that Mom’s clinic is going to stay in family hands.”

Connor manages to crack a smile at that—it was a pretty big win, and Malcolm’s face upon finding out that Tommy was not only refusing to sign off on his portion of the clinic, but had unearthed his presumed-dead-at-birth twin brother to outvote their father on the sale made for satisfying icing on the cake.

There are going to be many more challenges to come—crucial, life-altering ones—but at the very least, Connor can give his brother this.

Tommy fully understands what an incredible gift it is, as his expression goes from calmly pleased to igniting with the brightest, face-splitting grin imaginable. “Thank you,” he finally says, turning to clutch at Connor’s shoulders with both hands before pulling him in for an appreciative hug. “You know, I didn’t want to drag you into all of this…”

Connor shakes his head, tightening his hold on his brother in reassurance. “I offered to help. It was the very least I could do.”

Tommy pulls back a bit, joy starting to bleed out of his face as something else settles in. “Still…”

The elevator doors clank open without fanfare, bringing the hug to an end in order to board. Connor steps in first, slapping the Lobby button before settling in the back-right corner; while Tommy lags behind, his movements lead-heavy as if his body’s reacting to a realization that’s slowly coming to him.

By the time the doors have closed, it’s clear he’s reached it, and the celebratory times get yanked under by reality.

“We just told Dad,” Tommy says, voice pitching high in panic at the end as the weight of that revelation starts to sink in. “We just told Dad, and we told him in regards to an actual business matter. That means he’s going to have to go back to whatever buyer he had lined up and say, ‘Sorry, no can do, my son pulled his secret brother out of a hat and they ganged up on me, and, in an uncharacteristic move, I caved.’ There is no way that’s not going to get attention.”

“I agree.” Connor calmly folds his arms across his chest and leans against the back wall.

“You— you agree?” Tommy stammers, a loss for words as a cocktail of incredulity and irritation fizzes to the surface. “That’s all you have to say?”

That should set off alarm bells for Connor, get him to scramble to explain himself, to appease Tommy with a bit of anxiety and second-guessing. It’s what he would have done if he’d found himself in this situation years earlier, and his brother still expects to see that reaction. But this is one mask Connor is much too tired to pull up.

And so, he just nods.

Tommy lets out some sort of strangled, frustrated noise, before throwing the emergency stop switch.

Connor raises an eyebrow, giving his brother a Look.

Not that Tommy sees it, keeping his back turned to Connor as he runs a hand through his hair and makes as if he wants to pace. The indecision doesn’t last, though, and he turns to Connor, hand dropping limply to his side. “I just… Connie, what the hell is going on with you?”

Connor straightens at that, finally understanding what a bad move he’s made. He’d pinned too much on Tommy still being ecstatic over getting the clinic back (and, admittedly, his at-times less-than-stellar attention to detail), hoping that would be enough of a distraction to drop the matter with a shake of the head and mild annoyance. This is getting them into dangerous territory.

“First you—not that I’m mad, but without telling me—pack yourself up and move from Gotham to Starling,” Tommy notes, ticking it off on his finger. “Related to that, you drop your surgical residency with less than a year and a half to go, making no moves to transfer and pick it back up, and this doesn’t faze you at all?”

Connor opens his mouth and makes a hand motion with the intent of correcting his brother (quitting his residency at Gotham Memorial does, actually, mean something to him, and it was a difficult decision to make), but Tommy steamrolls over that attempt.

“And now, the grand pooh-bah of them all: after all this time of us deciding not to tell Dad or go public with ‘Surprise, it’s Twins!’ you throw it out the window, and are in no way concerned that you just nuked your anonymity?” Chest heaving, Tommy lets his shoulders drop and stares back at Connor almost helplessly. “I swear, I understand you even less than I do Oliver, these days.”

Oh, that’s a cutting remark, even if Tommy doesn’t fully realize it.

Connor sags against the wall, feeling physically backed into a corner as well as verbally. He brings a hand up to scrub the lower half of his face in thought, the short hairs of his scruff tickling his palm in a distantly familiar way. There’s no easy way out of this one, and as much as Connor is always up for a challenge, neither of the angles he’s currently entertaining seem like they’ll end well.

Option #1: Brush it off. Call it a delayed quarter-life crisis, a bit of soul-searching, something blasé, nothing to get all up-in-arms about. Pull a page from Queen’s book and lie.

Likely result? Tommy doesn’t take that as truth for a second. Something shatters irreparably between the twins.

Option #2, though…

Even if Tommy believes him (debatable, given the nature of the truth), Connor made a promise to himself that this was a burden he’d shoulder himself. No one else—especially not Tommy—should have to live with the same extent, the same specifics, of his knowledge.

The silence is closing in, though, and the longer Connor waits, the weaker Tommy’s faith and trust in him will become. It’s time to make a choice.

In the end, he opts for a bit of both.

“It— It’s kind of embarrassing, really,” Connor starts, forcing a nervous laugh up around the lump in his throat. “But I had this dream—nightmare, actually, and on New Year’s Day at that. I… don’t really remember the details, but when I woke up, it was with this really profound sense of loss.” He trails off, gulping a shaky breath in and cautiously lifting his gaze to meet Tommy’s.

It guts Connor all over again to see how his brother’s face plummets into a look of horrified understanding.

“Maybe not my finest hour, but I panicked,” Connor continues, hunching his shoulders slightly for effect. “Dropped everything, quit my residency, started looking up places in Starling. From the few scraps that lingered of that dream after I woke up, I got the impression that I had a lot of regrets—like, I never got the smug satisfaction of watching Dad’s face melt when I came walking through the door.” He allows a small smile to tug at his lips.

It’s infectious, as Tommy’s soon grappling with his own. “Wish I’d gotten that on camera.”

“You and me both,” Connor agrees, shaking his head. After a moment, he leans it back against the wall, making a point of diverting his eyes away from his brother. “But it was stuff like that. Things I could have done but didn’t, others I would never have even thought of in the moment, and still more that if given the opportunity, I would ch-…” He chokes on the word.

That’s tripping a little too close for comfort than these half-truths are supposed to.

Thankfully, Tommy misses that fumble, and his face softens at the rest of Connor’s words. “I get it, in a weirdly overreacting way,” he admits. “We’ve lost a lot of time in our lives that we should have had as brothers, and having something like that hit… it has to mess with your head.

“But Connor,” Tommy pauses, reaching out to place a hand on Connor’s shoulder. “It was a dream, in the end. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.” He winces. “So, you maybe could have waited on the big move instead of derailing your career.”

Connor groans at that and bats Tommy’s hand away. “I’ve made worse decisions, but that still wasn’t one of my best.”

“Hey, don’t start talking to me about terrible decisions,” Tommy warns as he finally turns forward again and switches the emergency stop off. As the lights come back on and they continue their descent, he shoots a grin over his shoulder. “On the bright side, though, at least that’ll dock you a few points and you’ll only beat me by a slight margin to be the favorite twin in the public’s eye. Because, you know, that’s going to be a thing now.”

Connor makes a face at that, which just makes Tommy toss his head back and laugh, eyes squeezed shut in mirth.

The distraction gives Connor the opening to let his expression fall and take a moment to fully process everything that’s just transpired.

Revealing himself to Malcolm was a risk, but the situation called for it, and frankly, it would have had to happen sooner or later. At least now Connor officially has an in, and can start doing everything in his power to make sure their father is brought down before he even tries to do the same to the city.

There’s still time—months, even—before the people of the Glades are truly in danger, but from Connor’s memory, the happier days Tommy has left are dwindling down to none. Things are going to blow up with Queen in a few weeks, by his estimate, and it won’t be much longer before Tommy pushes himself away from Laurel and into their father’s clutches, and by that point…

Well. It’s up to Connor to make sure things never get in the vicinity of that point.

Because these are the only things that matter:

Connor Rhodes woke up on New Year’s 2013 in his Gotham apartment. He went to sleep in Chicago in August 2019.

And he is going to save his brother even if it kills him.