#wip: obligatory sugar baby Kon

[suzukiblu]

Another round of "obligatory sugar baby Kon" behind the cut. tw: implications of past grooming/abuse. prev: (( chrono || non-chrono ))

“Um,” Kon says, his teeth just barely digging into his lower lip again as his eyes flick down and to the side–down towards Tim’s hand where it’s cupping his neck, even though he obviously can’t see that clearly from this angle. Though he can feel it, obviously. In multiple ways, via both standard-issue senses and specialized telekinesis. 

Tim is maybe gonna burn alive and lose his mind and really, really wants to know if Kon will let his TTK down for him, whether he can give him a hickey or not. 

He wonders–would it feel different to Kon, if someone kissed him without his TTK in the way? Would he like it better, or would he feel too vulnerable or awkward, or would it be too hard to concentrate on the actual kiss while holding his TTK in check, or– 

“Um,” Kon starts again, and then just sort of trails off and licks his lips. He’s still looking down towards Tim’s hand, his line of sight just barely visible under his half-lidded eyes and the gold liner framing his eyes and the glitter powder said liner’s just barely shed into his lashes. Tim wants to smear it with his thumb and see what it looks like, and brush his fingertips along Kon’s temple and into his hair and along his buzzed scalp and his half-slicked-back hair, because Kon’s been wearing his hair a little differently for their dates than the way he usually wears it, and specifically Kon’s been wearing it the same “differently” that Tim styled it for him at the mall. 

Tim was, like, at least trying not to obsess about that, but it’s very hard not to obsess about that, because maybe Kon’s doing it for practical “staying under the radar” reasons or because he decided he liked how it looked; maybe he’s doing it because he’s testing it out for being more convenient for keeping his hair out of his eyes in a fight. 

But maybe he’s doing it because he thinks Tim likes his hair this way. 

Tim really cannot pencil in the processing time for all the stuff he has to process right now. Like, there’s just no room in the schedule. Maybe next month. 

“You, uh, know I wasn’t actually thinking about streets and buildings when I said we could have some fun with the camera, right?” Kon asks just a little bit quietly, the corner of his mouth just barely ticking up and his eyes going soft and shy as he tilts his head to the side–to the side away from Tim’s hand, specifically, so the whole line of his neck’s all stretched out and exposed and . . . there. Just–there. Very, very there. “There”, in this context, meaning “under Tim’s hand”. 

And flicks his eyes to Tim’s face at the same time, like he wants to see if he’ll like that. 

. . . maybe next year he can pencil in that processing time, Tim corrects himself somewhere in the middle of the five-alarm apocalypse currently occurring in his head. Like. Just . . . somewhere in there, maybe. 

Ngk. Just–ngk. 

“I need to maybe not, or I’m not gonna be able to be normal about taking you to dinner,” he admits. Kon laughs again, just a little, and his face flushes again too, and he’s just so damn cute and Tim really does not understand how many inappropriate thoughts his brain is trying to think right now. It’s just–it’s so many. Usually he’s thinking too much by default, yeah, and definitely he is thinking too much and in way too many layers, but literally every single one of those layers is functioning more like, like, in the sense of a “dance of the seven veils” kind of “layering”. 

“I mean . . . you don’t have to be,” Kon says, still with just the slightest trace of shyness in both his expression and his tone. And then his expression–shifts, kind of, and turns flirty and . . . and a little bit past flirty as his mouth cocks into an inviting smirk, which Tim is really, really not capable of handling right now or possibly ever, so before Kon does his usual braggy overkill horndog routine he needs to just change the subject and– “You got me all this nice stuff to wear for you, daddy. Don’t you wanna see a little more of what’s under it?” 

Tim–pauses.

That’s . . . definitely Kon-levels of “total lack of subtlety”, yeah, but the phrasing is . . . 

What’s that phrasing, exactly?

[suzukiblu]

Day three of “obligatory sugar baby Kon” behind the cut. tw: implications of past grooming/abuse and the inherent problems in someone who was in that situation trying to flirt with someone actually age-appropriate. prev: (( chrono || non-chrono ))

“I–what?” Tim says like a useless idiot, attempting to shut his useless idiot brain up long enough for it to stop replaying Kon saying “you got me all this nice stuff” on a loop on literally every single possible level of his thought processes. It is, uh . . . not going well. At all. In no way whatsoever is it going well. 

Though “wear for you” is just a lost cause, considering. “Wear for you” is just the metaphorical elevator music of the rest of his life now, Tim guesses. That’s just a thing he’s gonna have to deal with for the rest of his life. When he’s sixty-five and faking being on his supervillain deathbed so he can retire in his alternate reality of choice, he’s gonna be thinking that instead of “Rosebud”. He’ll be thinking that on his actual deathbed, even.

“I mean–you like it when I wear the stuff you get me, don’t you?” Kon says and Tim probably wouldn’t notice the slight flash of self-consciousness that flickers across the other’s face if he weren’t literally on top of him and a Bat, but he is, in fact, literally on top of him and a Bat. “Makes for a way nicer wrap job than the comics page.” 

. . . Tim has a lot of thoughts about that phrasing. Just–a lot. A lot of very confused and tangled-up and all-over-the-place thoughts that he can’t even really narrow down to a specific emotion or genre of emotions or even “positive” or “negative”. 

Kon describing himself like he thinks he’s something to give him–something he’s willing to give him–that is just a very, very tangle-inducing thing to hear. 

“A ‘wrap job’,” Tim echoes slowly, because there are way, way too many ways to take that description, but not all that many good ones. He’s used to hearing Kon flirt like he thinks he’s the hottest thing since sliced bread, all cocky and smug and preening, not talking up the girls but talking up himself, way too self-centered and self-obsessed and– 

. . . ah, Tim realizes very, very slowly. 

He’s used to hearing Kon sell himself when he’s flirting. He doesn’t talk up the girls; he talks up himself. 

He talks up–the product.

“What, you don’t like presents, daddy?” Kon asks as he gives him a flirty, teasing grin with that flicker of self-consciousness still in the back of his eyes. Tim thinks about those opaque sunglasses he likes to wear all the time and wonders if maybe Kon isn’t used to people seeing his eyes this much. “

Tim decides that salt-and-burning Cadmus is actually not enough, and he also needs to throw Rex Leech into an active volcano and maybe also literally every single girl Kon has ever dated for more than five minutes, whoever said girls are. Just–this doesn’t feel like making out on the ledge did, where Kon was all soft and eager and overwhelmed and Tim felt like they were on the same wavelength; this feels more like . . . 

Talking up the product, again. 

“I like you,” Tim says, and shifts his hand down to Kon’s shoulder, which feels like–less risky territory right now, maybe. “That’s not–I mean–” 

“You know I’ll be whatever you like,” Kon purrs, and shifts his posture just enough to make himself less of a bed and more of a lounger; curved and shifted to support Tim more than himself, and Tim feels–

Tim feels very weird, suddenly, and not in a good way at all.

[suzukiblu]

Day four of “obligatory sugar baby Kon” behind the cut. tw: implications of past grooming/abuse and the inherent problems in someone who was in that situation trying to flirt with someone actually age-appropriate. prev: (( chrono || non-chrono ))

“Sidewalk,” he says, quick and abrupt. “Uh–please. Just . . . can we land somewhere?” 

He needs to think straight, and he needs to take a step back, and he needs to–compartmentalize, and focus. 

Kon’s talking like–Kon’s acting like– 

Robin’s met a lot of people who feel like they need to sell themselves in one way or another, and a lot of kids who don’t act quite like–who aren’t– 

He doesn’t exactly like to think it, but right now Kon’s reminding him of some of the abuse and trafficking victims he’s met; the call girls and rent boys and just . . . 

Just the kids who act like somebody gave them a script, instead of like they figured out what they wanted to say for themselves. 

“Um–yeah, sure,” Kon says, just barely frowning, which is probably because Tim is having a very hard time acting okay about Kon talking to him like an escort chatting up a client or–

He really cannot act okay about that, no. 

It makes him think about Cadmus taking advantage of Kon’s time and life for barely anything more than room and board and wonder just what Kon was doing in Hawaii and just what kind of girls he’s dated, and–

He really, really cannot act okay about this at all. 

Kon shifts his grip on him and then flies them down to the mouth of an alley that opens out onto a sidewalk–again, terrible Gotham survival instincts, but Tim really doesn’t have the bandwidth to get into that right now–and lets Tim down onto the concrete and gravel. Tim takes a step back from him and clears his throat, trying not to be–not to seem–

Robin knows how to talk to escorts and prostitutes and victims and people who think they’re a product in just about every possible situation. Because obviously he does, and of course he does. There is just–there’s not a situation in which a Robin wouldn’t know how to do that. That’s just not a thing. 

But Tim Drake doesn’t know how to talk to Kon-El in this situation. 

“Thanks,” he tries awkwardly, and Kon shifts his weight and looks like he’s about to hunch his shoulders, but instead visibly redirects to stand up straighter; links his hands together behind his back. It pushes his chest out a little, and the way he’s standing is–

The way Kon’s standing is a display, even now. 

It always is, isn’t it. 

Tim thinks about the stupid teen-magazine poses, and thinks maybe he wasn’t actually prepared enough for the kind of relationship that involves paying for literally everything in the life of someone who views themselves as . . . whatever, exactly, Kon views himself as. 

Tim didn’t actually realize Kon viewed himself as anything but a superhero, and didn’t really follow through the logic of what somebody who thinks their entire purpose in life is to be useful might . . . assume here, maybe.

“Did I do something wrong?” Kon asks, looking uncomfortable. Tim tries to figure out how to say yes but I’m ninety-nine percent sure it was actually someone ELSE doing something wrong and you not knowing that said something WAS wrong in a way that won’t sound patronizing or too heavy or make Kon get defensive or just ditch him or–“I, uh–I just haven’t really done it before–with a guy, I mean–so I just . . . well, you can give me some tips, right? I’m not, like–I’m up for anything, y’know?” 

Tim hates this conversation.

[suzukiblu]

. . . anyway LISTEN I told 'yall November was gonna be "obligatory sugar daddy Tim/sugar baby Kon AU" month, and I really did not INTEND to post my daily words for it again this year but also, like, fuck it, we ball. No promises I will update EVERY day this time around but again: fuck it, we ball. ( also uhhhhh I've been writing this fic kinda-sorta-semi out of order lately but there is still a significant chunk of word count I'd already written that I would've pre-gamed and posted YESTERDAY if I'd thought I was gonna be doing this, sooooo hope nobody minds us kickin' off the month with like an extra 5.9k on top of the 1.6k of obligatory sugar that I ACTUALLY wrote today behind this here cut? yes? no?? Bueller???? )

get sugared, Super-boytoy. Tim, you just . . . you just do your future-supervillain best over there, buddy. you just do what you can with yourself. prev: (( chrono || non-chrono ))

“I wanted to,” Tim says again, and Kon glances away and bites his lip, turning the flowers by the stem again. 

“It’s, uh–pretty,” he says, then clears his throat. “I mean, it’s–cool. Thanks.” 

“If I can’t bring you fresh ones, well . . .” Tim shrugs. Kon glances back to him, and very briefly presses one of the orchid blooms against his own mouth. His face is still all flushed and his eyes are still a little soft, and it’s . . . it makes a picture, alright, even if it's not one Tim's specifically set up to take. Especially with the gold eyeliner and his blue eyes both matching the orchids. 

Tim didn't plan that, obviously, but he thinks it makes up for the sapphire versus ruby thing.

“Um . . .” Kon trails off, biting his lip. Glances down at the orchids from under his lashes. It doesn't make him any less of a picture, for sure. “So, um–do you wanna see the ‘something nice’ I got?” 

Tim blinks, immediately thinks of the most embarrassing option that Kon could possibly mean, and desperately tries to fight back a mortified flush at the idea. But, well–everything he can see Kon wearing is something he remembers buying him already, so . . . 

Oh god, he needs his brain to shut up right now. Immediately. Right now and immediately and forever. 

“Sure,” he says like a normal person, trying not to panic. “What is it?” 

Kon, thank god, pulls a little rectangular package inexplicably–and inexpertly–wrapped in newspaper comics out of the same coat pocket he tucked the jewelry box in. There's plain white string tied around it in a bow. 

Tim . . . blinks. 

If he didn't know better, he'd think Kon had . . . 

“I, um, got you something?” Kon says, and Tim stares blankly at the package. He–what? “For once, anyway. Well, I guess, uh, technically you got it for yourself, and actually this is kinda stupid maybe, you can literally just get yourself whatever you want whenever, obviously, but I just thought, uh–” 

“You got me something?” Tim repeats in surprise. Kon turns pink and shoves the package at him. Tim is too bewildered not to take it. 

“I thought it’d be, uh–fun,” he says, biting his lip and still very visibly blushing. “I mean–that we could have some fun with it. Y’know?” 

Tim stares at the package for another moment, then looks up at Kon. Alright, this maybe isn’t exactly the vibe he was going for here in terms of who’s paying for what and who’s giving things to who, but . . . well, Kon apparently used his allowance for whatever this is, at least, which gives him a reason to have wanted the allowance, so . . . he can work with that, he figures. Like, it’s an “in” to work from; a step in the process. 

He can’t tell what Kon’s gotten him from the shape of the package, though the edges are hard even though it doesn’t feel like it’s in a box or anything. “Have some fun” isn’t much of a clue, though he supposes it does imply something interactive. Maybe it’s a game of some kind, or–

Tim unties the bow and splits apart the clumsy seam of the comic-page wrapping paper with his thumb, tugging through its layers to reveal the package’s contents, and Kon flushes a little darker and watches him just a little bit nervously. 

Tim doesn’t actually know what to say. 

“I just thought, um, a real one’d probably take better pictures than a phone can,” Kon says sheepishly, slanting his eyes away and half-hiding his face behind the orchids. “I made sure the battery was charged and the guy at the store said it's got a lot of storage, I guess, so . . .” 

“You got me a camera,” Tim says blankly, which is the most bewildering possible thing that Kon could have gotten him short of, like . . . no, it’s pretty much just the most bewildering possible thing that Kon could have gotten him. By far it’s the most bewildering possible thing that Kon could have gotten him. 

“You like taking pictures, right?” Kon fidgets a little, then smiles just barely shyly as he glances back at him. Tim's heart skips a few beats. Or more than just “a few”, maybe. “So, um–I thought maybe we could go do that . . . somewhere. You know, after dinner.” 

“Oh,” Tim says, blinking at him a little stupidly. It’s not a particularly good camera, honestly–like, it’s a perfectly functional model for casual amateur use and a decently reliable commercial brand, but he’s got much better ones that are all professional-quality. He hasn’t used any of them in a while and most of them are admittedly a few years old now, but . . . yeah, this was a hundred bucks max, if that, and his cheapest camera was over five hundred. 

Note to self: raise Kon’s allowance. 

Also, apparently now his favorite camera is the kind of camera civilian amateurs just take random family photos on. Apparently that’s a thing. 

Tim really doesn’t know how to feel about the fact that Kon not only remembered something he mentioned having an interest in, Kon bothered to actually get him something he thought he’d have an interest in. That is really, really not the dynamic he’s been encouraging here, for one thing. And also, why even would Kon do that? Like–really? 

“Thanks,” Tim says sincerely, turning the camera over in his hands and feeling incredibly embarrassed about all of this. “I love it.” 

“Cool,” Kon says, biting his lip around a smile. His face is still a little pink and he looks all soft and pretty like that, especially with the flowers still in his hand. Tim really was not prepared for Kon having “soft and pretty” in his repertoire. Like, that was not a thing he ever expected to see from his cocky, crowing brawler of a teammate. 

Kon’s only a brawler because he thinks he’s supposed to be, though, Tim’s pretty sure. Like–increasingly sure, at this point. 

He really, really needs to figure out how to get Kon to tell Robin more about his TTK. Or, like . . . anything about it, apparently. Just literally any single thing, at this point. 

“Thank you,” he says again, inspecting the camera assessingly and making note of all its functions and ports and the generally obvious basics. “We could go take some shots around downtown later, if you’re up for that?” 

Kon turns bright red, and Tim doesn’t understand for about half a second before remembering–the last time Kon had talked to him about taking pictures, he’d offered . . . 

Oh Jesus. 

Tim is either incredibly stupid or–actually, he doesn’t even know. Lucky? Embarrassing? The dumbest moron alive who didn’t even realize he was being flirted with again? All those things and several even worse ones? 

Kon had offered to let him take spicy pics of him the last time they'd talked about taking pictures, whatever “spicy” means to Kon–brash, impulsive, shameless Kon–and Tim’s the idiot whose first thought upon Kon following up that conversation by very literally giving him a camera was to go take pictures of fucking downtown.

He is the most useless “sugar daddy” to ever sugar. 

Well, to be fair, it is Gotham downtown, so it’s very–

“I like taking pictures of streets and buildings,” he blurts belatedly, fumbling to sound like just the oblivious idiot that he is and not some kind of weird fucking perv who’s trying to get Kon arrested for public indecency. Jesus, he’s stupid. “And people-watching is interesting too. You know, stuff like that.” 

“Oh,” Kon says, and looks several ways at once, including both a little relieved and a little disheartened, which . . . okay, Tim would literally die if they actually went somewhere to take spicy pics tonight, so is unfortunately unavoidable. He’s not trying to make Kon not feel–attractive or anything, but he needs at least twenty-four hours to make a plan and also two or three or seventeen contingency plans before . . . anything like that happens. Ever. Even in theory. “Um–yeah, sure. That sounds cool.” 

“Cool,” Tim says, still desperately pretending to be an idiot. It’s not hard, on account of the fact that he very much is an idiot. 

Kon pauses for a moment, then perks up a little, seeming to think of something, and asks–“When’s dinner?” 

“Our reservation’s in forty-five minutes,” Tim says, double-checking the time on his phone just to be sure. “Well, forty-six. I figured that’d let us take our time walking over and maybe we could window-shop a little on the way.” 

And also shop-shop a lot, if Kon gives him literally even the slightest indication that he wants or needs something. Just if it comes up or anything. That’s all. 

Tim definitely did plan their route to the restaurant to cut straight through the middle of the downtown shopping district, either way. 

“We could’ve just met there, dude,” Kon says wryly, but grins anyway, glancing down at the orchids in his hand again. “Forty-six minutes, huh?” 

“Yeah,” Tim confirms. 

“And you like taking pictures of streets and buildings?” Kon asks, his grin turning just a little bit sly. Tim frowns briefly in confusion, not sure what the grin’s about. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Gotham has a lot of really interesting architecture and design. Like, it’s an old city, and one that’s been pretty resistant to updates in a lot of areas or just not had the money for those updates. So you get a lot of places with a lot of character and it’s basically the bastard child of gothic and art deco design with a side of industrial warehouse, depending on the part of town you’re in. Like, Crime Alley and the Diamond District have very different vibes, but they’re both very Gotham vibes, if you know what to look for. It’s–” 

Kon is grinning really widely at him, for some reason. Tim realizes he’s rambling like a moron and turns red. 

“Uh,” he says, repressing a wince. “Yes. Yeah. I like taking pictures of streets and buildings.” 

“Cool,” Kon says, and then he carefully packs the orchids back into their box and it back into the gift bag and transfers the chocolates and jewelry back into it too, then grins even wider at him as he hooks the bag’s handles over his arm and into the crook of his elbow. “Don’t drop the camera, babe.” 

“Wha–” Tim starts to say, and then Kon grabs him by the arm and pulls him into the closest alley, which is terrible survival instincts for Gotham, oh god, but before Tim can say anything about that Kon’s wrapped an arm around his waist just tight enough to just barely lift him off his feet and bolted straight up into the air with him. “Shit!”

Tim doesn’t drop the camera because he’s held onto cameras while falling off literal buildings before, but definitely only because of that. Muscle memory, or whatever. Also he’s been snatched off his feet by Bruce and Dick plenty of times and thrown off rooftops by multiple rogues and thugs over the years and these days gets regularly dragged around by Bart, all while holding very important things he could not afford to drop, so it’s not like either the sudden jolt or the effort to keep his grip on the camera are as disorienting as it otherwise would be. Just . . . 

Ugh, Tim realizes, absolutely unimpressed with himself upon realizing that the breathless feeling he’s having right now is not actually related to the swift and sudden increase in altitude, but is actually just because it’s Kon holding him. 

He is an idiot, isn’t he, he reflects resignedly. Just an actual literal idiot. 

Jesus. 

“Whatcha think?” Kon asks with a grin as he comes to a stop in mid-air with him. He stops very suddenly, but Tim notices a distinct lack of jarring with said stop, which implies Kon’s got his TTK around him again and probably completely around him, which means–

Oh god, Tim thinks, and very quickly makes himself stop thinking about that. 

“It’s cool,” he says, because a normal civilian would think flying was something interesting and unusual, but it’s hard to act too excited about a move Kon probably pulls on literally everyone he–

“I meant the view, babe!” Kon says with a laugh, and Tim . . . blinks. 

And then he looks down. 

They’re hovering a few thousand feet up, and downtown is already lit up bright in the early evening gloom. And Kon . . . 

“Streets and buildings, as ordered,” Kon says, grinning wider with a smug, cocky look on his face. 

Oh no, he’s hot, Tim realizes with dread, and then blinks again. Stares down at the city below, past the whipping wind and down into the busy streets and the bright, dazzling lights cutting through the murky gloom. He’s seen Gotham like this a thousand times, obviously, because of course he has–he’s been climbing these rooftops for years, and every night he runs across and swings back and forth between them and utterly fails to learn how to do more than a double backflip. 

One day, he promises himself distractedly, and then looks back at Kon. 

He’s seen Gotham like this a thousand times, but never just because someone thought he’d like it. Like–not like this, he means. Dick's shown him a few particularly special or exhilarating views over the years, yeah, but . . . definitely not like this. Not for a reason like this. 

And definitely not while peacocking all smug and pretty dressed up in clothes that he bought him and holding him close enough to kiss. 

Kon’s expression turns a little sheepish; a little soft. Not quite shy, but . . . 

“Do you like it?” he asks, his voice pitched a little quieter, and Tim has the much worse and even more dread-inducing realization of oh no, he’s CUTE.

He swallows, briefly, and feels his face burn. 

“Yeah,” he manages in an almost-normal voice. “I like it.” 

Kon grins at him, brighter than any city light, and Tim barely keeps himself from dropping the camera after all. 

“Thanks,” he attempts awkwardly, making himself focus on the camera and resisting the urge to take an immediate shot of that city-light grin. 

Then he takes one anyway, because of course he does. Kon laughs in surprise, then makes a face at him teasingly. 

“Hey, you can buy this face in any cheap gossip rag, focus on the fun stuff,” he jokes, jerking his head towards the city below. Tim looks searchingly at him for a moment, and then for obvious reasons snaps another picture. Kon flushes a little again. They probably won't even come out from this close, but . . . 

“You’re the most fun I’ve had all week,” Tim says, which is definitely too honest but clearly necessary to make a point of saying. Kon turns redder, ducking his head and grinning around his bitten lip. 

“You don’t have to say that kind of thing to me, man,” he says, and it comes across almost like a reflex. Tim hates . . . yeah, just literally everybody Kon’s ever known in his whole entire life, actually? Like, pretty much everybody? Bart gets a break because he grew up alone in VR and is therefore terrible with people and the girls get a break because they haven’t known any of them that long, but everybody else can just take a long walk off a short gutter, in Tim’s opinion. 

Especially any “everybody” from Cadmus. 

Or Metropolis, at this point. 

“I’m not saying anything I don’t want to say,” he says simply, and goes to the effort to frame a few shots of the skyline so Kon will know he appreciates . . . well, not the angle, exactly, but the thought. 

Technically he is usually on top of a building when he’s doing this, so the angle is actually a slightly different one than he’s used to–not that he’s been taking photos lately, just–not the point, really. Kon got him a camera and brought him up here because he clearly thought he’d like it, and damned if Tim is gonna do anything to make him think he doesn’t. 

He has better cameras for things like this–aerial shots and night photography and long-distance and the like, and better cameras for closeup candids too–but he already knows these pictures are all going to be exactly what he wants them to be, even the ones that don't come out. 

Or especially those, maybe. 

He's not sure how he'd explain that feeling to someone else. 

Kon flies them around, staying out of sight behind the light pollution and among the shadows of the buildings, and Tim takes . . . a lot more pictures than he needs to, actually. He was just trying to make sure Kon knew he appreciated him thinking of him, but actually . . . 

Well. 

It’s fun, that’s all. 

It’s . . . been a while, kinda, since he got to spend this much time on just photography and nothing else. Or–any time at all, really. 

Not that this is nothing else, obviously, given that Kon’s holding him and it is very, very hard to concentrate on anything besides that, but it is the kind of a view a standard civilian never gets, and it’s kind of nice to be flying for non-work-related reasons, for once. Like . . . novel, he guesses. A different experience. 

Technically he and Dick do “fly” together just for fun, sometimes, but that’s different. Like–so many kinds of different. It helps them in their work–keeps the rooftops familiar and them both in shape and in sync–but he can’t take photos when he’s trying to keep up with Nightwing across the rooftops of Gotham, and it’s not like Dick’s carrying him either. 

Also, it’s much less flustering and difficult to concentrate through, because again, Dick is not carrying him, and also Dick doesn’t do things like wear clothes he bought or do his eyeliner and paint his nails for him. Or, uh . . . anything like that. 

Also, definitely the “spicy pics” thing is not at all a thing, with Dick. Like, not even slightly, in any way whatsoever. And they’ve also never made out in a changing room or the back of a planetarium or– 

Look, there’s a lot of ways it’s different, okay? 

A lot of ways. 

“I'm not boring you, am I?” Tim asks a little bit sheepishly as Kon lands them on a ledge just behind one of the bigger gargoyles, tucked in tight in the shadows between it and the building it's perched on. “We can probably still fit in some window-shopping before dinner, if you want.” 

“Oh my god, dude, I promise we can do things you don't have to spend money on,” Kon says with a laugh as he lets him down on the ledge. “Though if it helps you technically did spend money on this, given how I got the camera and all.” 

“It's your allowance,” Tim says, because he wants to make sure Kon actually gets that. “You can spend it however you want.” 

“Well, I spent it how I wanted,” Kon says, and then steps closer into his space with a smile. Tim ends up sitting on the gargoyle’s back as Kon leans down to kiss him, and it's not like he's never kissed anyone while perched on a gargoyle before, but somehow it feels like something new anyway. New and electric, bright and easy and smeared with the city lights and thrilling in its shadows, and– 

Kon breaks off the kiss, though he keeps a hand on Tim’s arm, probably to make sure the squishy untrained civilian won't accidentally fall off the ledge and get splatted on the concrete. Tim barely holds himself back from chasing his mouth. 

“It's cool, anyway. Um, doing stuff you're into with you, I mean,” Kon says, looking a little soft and almost-shy again, and never mind, Tim not only needs to chase his mouth, he needs to set up a damn manhunt for it. “You're real cute when you get excited, man. I mean, uh–just–” 

The manhunt is going to require a very significant budget, Tim notes. 

Then he kisses him again, obviously. Kon melts down into it–into him, really–and wraps his arms around his neck, and Tim feels several kind of ways about it. Admittedly, it's the easier option with him sitting on the gargoyle and Kon leaning over him, but Kon's put his arms around his neck a couple of times now, and, well . . . 

That's just not something he would've expected from him, he guesses. Not “cool” or masculine or badass or . . . whatever, exactly, Kon thinks he's supposed to be. 

So Tim . . . likes it, he thinks, that Kon doesn't seem to think he needs to be like that around Tim Drake. 

Robin’s sure as hell never seen Kon in eyeliner. 

Robin's loss, Tim thinks. 

. . . maybe he's compartmentalizing a little too much these days, but still. 

Kon makes a very, very soft little sound between their mouths and then laughs, and Tim promises himself he won't stop at Gotham: he'll take over Metropolis for this asshole one day. Even if that means putting up with Lex Luthor and Superman. And also, like . . . everything about Metropolis. 

He'll figure it out. Supervillainy is still a long-term plan, so he's got time. 

Anyway, if he gives it to Kon after he takes it over he won't have to put up with it, so it's whatever. Sugar daddies do that kind of thing, right? Get their sugar-ees a city? 

. . . okay, definitely not. Like, very definitely not. 

“Okay date idea, then?” Kon asks as he leans back a bit and does a very bad job of biting back a smile, his face a little flushed and arms squeezing a little tighter around his neck. 

Tim will get him Metropolis if it kills Lex Luthor. 

“Very okay,” he says, smiling back at him. Kon grins, his face turning just a little bit redder, and then kisses him again. Tim has absolutely no complaints about that. Ever. He can’t even imagine a complaint he’d have about that, in fact. 

Worst case scenario, he’ll get them in at another restaurant if they miss their reservation. 

He really doesn't know what else he's supposed to do about how easy Kon blushes. 

They definitely spend too long making out against the gargoyle and Tim definitely lets himself get too riled up during it–and does not think about tactile telekinesis or any kind of related passive perception while he does–but by the time he’s the one pressing Kon back against the building, he really doesn’t care anymore. 

The fact Kon is even willing to let him do that when there is literally no way Tim could ever actually pin him anywhere without a way to sabotage his powers is . . . really, really distracting. Just–so distracting. 

Jesus, Tim thinks, breaking off just long enough to catch his breath for a moment. Kon pants softly against his mouth, which sabotages that even worse than kryptonite would sabotage TTK. 

Jesus, Tim thinks again, and then crushes their mouths back together. 

He doesn’t need to breathe that often. 

Kon makes a softer, breathier sound this time, and Tim does not let himself make it weird by letting his hands wander anywhere outside of second base territory. Frankly he’s not sure second base territory isn’t him making it weird, but Kon started it, so hopefully it’s not? Like–logically it’d follow that Kon wouldn’t touch him anywhere he doesn’t want touched, right? 

Well–hopefully, anyway. 

The air feels tight, Tim notices suddenly, like the feeling of sinking into deeper pressure when underwater but all at once, and then realizes–oh. 

Uh. 

Okay. 

“Um,” he says, and immediately the feeling of pressure vanishes as Kon jerks back and claps a hand over his own mouth. Which is mostly him pushing Tim back, given their position, but he does crack the brickwork behind him a little. 

Whoops, Tim thinks. 

“Sorry!” Kon blurts. “Sorry, sorry, that’s–sorry! I just, uh–got a little too into it. I won’t do it again.” 

“It’s really not a problem,” Tim says, with absolutely no idea how to take the idea of Kon getting “a little too into it” when kissing him, or the idea that getting a little too into it apparently involves getting wrapped up in TTK a lot more noticeably than making him bulletproof at the museum did. “I mean–it didn’t hurt or anything, I was just surprised.” 

“I–yeah, I know, it’s just–weird,” Kon says, still looking mortified. “So–sorry. That’s all.” 

“I don’t mind weird,” Tim says, because actually the idea of being temporarily at least as invulnerable as Kon is while making out with him implies being able to devote a lot more attention to said making out, as opposed to keeping half an eye out for snipers or rogues or random rooftop criminals. Not that he’d stop paying any attention to that, obviously, just–yeah. Well. 

It’s a little tempting, that’s all. 

“Uh–you don’t?” Kon bites his lip, still looking a little embarrassed. 

“It kind of just felt like scuba-diving, but with less equipment involved,” Tim says with a little shrug, keeping his tone light because “seriously, you have no idea how much I’d like to not be compulsively keeping an eye out for snipers right now” isn’t a very “civilian” thing to say. “And I’m not about to complain about you enjoying kissing me that much either way.” 

“Oh,” Kon says, and flushes a little. “Uh–really?” 

“Really,” Tim says, smiling at him again and tugging gently at the lapels of his jacket to pull himself back in. Kon blushes, and grins, and meets him halfway for the kiss. The sensation of pressure wraps him up again, gentle but undeniable, and Tim feels several kinds of ways about it. 

Maybe even a little bit safe, or at least as safe as anyplace outside the Batcave ever gets. 

Tim knows there’s no such thing as being perfectly, completely safe, but getting all wrapped up in Kon’s TTK and kissed for it makes it hard to remember that. 

Very, very hard. 

They spend a much longer time making out this time. Tim is vaguely aware that they still have a dinner reservation to make, but . . . well, he did pad the time to allow for window-shopping, so even with the time they spent flying around taking pictures, it's probably fine? 

Yeah, no, they’ve definitely missed their reservation by now. Probably way past missed it. Just so, so far past missed it. 

Weirdly, Tim doesn’t care as much as he should, even though he really prefers when things go to plan and also needs Kon to feel appreciated and like he got properly spoiled and taken someplace nice. He’s going to have to figure out something else on the fly, though, because he really does needs Kon to feel appreciated and also needs the excuse to get him more used to getting money spent on him and–

Tim remembers that he needs to breathe more than he's currently breathing and breaks off the kiss. Kon half-chases his mouth with his own, audibly breathless himself. Tim is not equipped to handle Kon breathless. 

That might actually be more flattering than the TTK thing. Or, uh–flustering, maybe. 

Both, maybe. “Both” is probably accurate here. 

Jesus, Tim does not know what he did to deserve Kon getting breathless over something he’s done to him, much less all soft and pretty and–

They have definitely, definitely missed their reservation. Usually Tim has a better sense of time than that, but usually Tim doesn’t have Kon wanting to make out on a Gotham rooftop with him, Like, he thinks he can forgive himself a little bit of disorientation on that one, considering. 

. . . as long as Bruce never finds out he messed up that bad, anyway. Because Bruce would definitely not like hearing he’d messed up that bad, TTK or not. 

Probably especially involving the TTK, actually. Probably Bruce would not take “yeah I let Superboy get distracted enough to unconsciously wrap me up in his Kryptonian-level superpowers while he wasn’t in full control of them and actually, like, encouraged it, kinda? like, explicitly encouraged it, actually”. 

Yeah, Bruce would not like that. 

“Um,” Tim says, and clears his throat a little awkwardly. “So, uh–hungry yet?” 

“You could say that,” Kon murmurs, then flashes him a sharp, wicked grin with his eyes slit open just enough to fix on Tim’s mouth. Tim spares a moment to compartmentalize just enough to not lose his mind about that, then makes the mistake of licking his lips anxiously, sees Kon’s hooded eyes go hot at the sight, and immediately fails to not lose his mind. 

“Uh,” he manages, and then decides they don’t really need to get dinner just yet and maybe they could just, like–no, no, Kon is definitely not getting enough calories from that stupid barely-legal underground lab’s stupid definitely-not-health-code-compliant cafeteria, Tim is not gonna be a bad enough date to not get his date a respectable amount of calories. That is just not a thing that he’s gonna, like . . . thing, as a thing. Or whatever. 

Not like Superman’s been bringing Kon casseroles or anything, the prick. 

“Um, I–uh, might’ve let us get a little too distracted, sorry,” Tim attempts after a moment of mental fumbling, making himself push back from Kon a little and pulling his phone out to check the time. Yeah, they have definitely missed their reservation. Very, very thoroughly have they missed it. 

Dammit. That is not Bat-quality situational awareness. 

“You think that was just you, man?” Kon asks with a little laugh, just barely ducking his head and biting his lip. It is . . . very distracting. As is his face. And his hands, which are still loosely on Tim’s back, and his TTK, which is still loosely . . . basically everywhere, yeah. Just–way too many places for Tim to be rational about, basically. 

“I mean, I was the one who made the reservation,” he says, clearing his throat awkwardly as he does his best to at least fake rationality. “So, uh, I should’ve been paying attention to the time. I can see if there’s someplace we can still slip in, it’s a little last-minute for a Friday but–” 

Kon kisses him again. 

Tim was saying something, he’s reasonably sure, but he couldn’t remember whatever it was with a gun to his head. A gun to his head while out of his suit and without Kon on the same floor as him, to be clear. 

Kon leans back and grins at him, all bright and pretty and cutting right through the shade and shadows of Gotham like a spotlight-signal lighting up the cloud cover. Tim remains vaguely aware of the fact that he was doing . . . something. At some point. In theory. 

God, Kon is so pretty. So, so pretty. And everything he’s wearing is something Tim bought him, coat and clothes and jewelry and all. Just–all of it, as far as he can see. 

Tim does not let himself think about what else Kon might or might not be wearing right now. Just–that way lies madness, and also Kon not getting a decent dinner and decent spoiling. 

. . . there’s probably some other ways Tim could spoil him, technically, if he just– 

Tim does not finish that thought. 

“You’re so fucking cute, daddy,” Kon says, still grinning just as signal-bright and pretty at him. Tim is not prepared for literally any of that and nearly melts right off the ledge into an incoherent mess of street pizza. 

“Uh,” he says, swallowing roughly. “We should–are you hungry yet?” 

Kon laughs, for some reason. Tim very quietly and carefully burns alive, and then Kon floats up a few inches and ducks around him and back out into the open air, leaning down to grin at him and reaching to–probably he’s intending to pick him up again, Tim’s brain is vaguely aware, but the rest of Tim is thinking more like hurr durr pretty boy, which is definitely why he ends up reaching up to cup Kon’s face in his hands and tug him down for another kiss, pushing himself up on his toes on the edge of the ledge to reach him easier. Kon makes a soft, breathless little noise, then laughs in delight and kisses him back. 

The wind is cold and sharp and the evening sky is all heavy dark clouds and hazy light pollution and Kon’s wearing clothes Tim bought him, some of which Tim even suggested to him, and he put on makeup and painted his nails to come see him and he’s got a gift bag of little things Tim picked out for him hooked in the crook of his elbow and he liked all of those little things, and they’ve not only missed but obliterated their dinner reservation, and they’re half-on a ledge high above the street and kissing and Kon is just so pretty.

And Kon also bought him a camera and brought him up here because he thought he’d like it and called him “cute”, which are all facts that Tim is definitely going to have to compartmentalize to fully process later, or else he really will melt right off the stupid ledge. 

The spicy pics thing, also, is a thing. The spicy pics thing is, uh–very much a thing. 

Tim is maybe just never gonna process that particular fact in, like, self-defense. 

Ever. 

. . . god, he’s going to have to process that fact at some point, isn’t he. God. That is . . . that is a whole thing that he is going to have to do. Like, effectively and well and throughly.

Maybe it’s not too late to just go supervillain right now, actually. Maybe Kon would be open to, like, minionhood or something. Lots of supervillains put their minions up in their lairs, right? That’s totally a thing, isn’t it? 

Ugh, no, Kon deserves a place he can really feel like is his place and also he has not laid near enough groundwork to get Dick to switch sides. Like, Alfred would, obviously. Alfred will be on-board the second the rusty crowbar and shrapnel bomb plan comes up and will probably have useful notes to add. But Dick is gonna require some more long-term finessing and Babs definitely won’t come if Dick doesn’t and– 

Kon laughs into the kiss and cups Tim’s face in return, which is incredibly distracting, and then squishes his face, which is incredibly annoying. 

“Hey!” Tim sputters, and Kon laughs again and leans back just enough to grin at him. 

“You are so weird, dude,” he says. “I can literally hear you thinking.” 

“. . . that’s not me being detached from the situation, I–” Tim starts, unable to repress a wince, and Kon just grins wider, grabs his wrists, and tugs him off the ledge and–oh, okay, that’s a weird sensation, Tim notes, because gravity does absolutely nothing at all to him until Kon’s pulled him into his arms and wrapped him up in them again all easy and secure. . 

So that’s . . . yeah, no, “incredibly distracting” isn’t actually gonna cover this one, considering. 

“Uh,” he says, blinking a couple of times. That. That is definitely not how Superboy holds Robin. 

Frick. 

“I just gotta keep you better attached, right, daddy?” Kon purrs–really purrs, his chest briefly vibrating against Tim’s–and then grins wider at him again with eyes that are, unfortunately, literally goddamn sparkling right now–thanks, gold eyeliner, Tim didn’t need those higher thought processes–before giving him another quick little kiss that Tim actually would like to turn into a four-hour make-out session and maybe also a sleepover and–

God he needs to remember how to compartmentalize. He really, really needs to remember how to compartmentalize. 

Also he needs to kiss Kon’s literal friggin’ brains out, the smug friggin’ asshole.

Mid-air makeouts are the worst possible idea Kon has ever inflicted on him and Tim would sooner fight Killer Croc without his utility belt than point that fact out to him. 

He winds his arms around Kon’s neck and kisses him back, and Kon makes this tiny little–not pleased, not content, but actually happy-sounding noise and kisses back harder. Tim feels gravity stop being a particularly relevant concern again and feels like he’s floating in deep, heavy water but also like he’s the lightest he’s ever been in his life, and it is . . . it is a feeling, alright. 

Kon is a menace. Kon is a problem. 

Kon is so, so damn cute. 

“You are an actual literal brat, baby,” Tim mutters slightly more feelingly than he means to, and Kon’s laugh comes out a little breathier this time and he ducks his head to the side and his face flushes and–

No. Nope. No. Tim needs to not learn anything new about himself or Kon tonight, or, worse, anything about him and Kon. That is just not a thing he has time for in his schedule. He’s got to fit in an anxiety attack and three full files’ worth of casework this weekend, for one, plus his science presentation and that make-up book report, and also come up with someplace else nice enough to take Kon to dinner tonight. 

“So, uh–dinner?” he says very quickly–self-defense, again–and Kon bites his lower lip and grins around it, his face still turned just a little bit away. Tim pretends they’re not effectively pressed together from knee to neck right now. Pretends valiantly. “I mean–um, if you’re hungry yet.” 

Kon laughs, ducking his head lower, the dangling gold teardrop hanging from his ear gleaming warmly in the murky electric city light. Tim goes through multiple stages of emotional processing to keep himself from kissing his neck right behind that earring and completely forgetting about not only dinner, but all his homework and casework and even the anxiety attack. 

Does Kon laugh this much around Robin? 

Tim really doesn’t feel like he does. 

He also doesn’t tell Robin very important things like the fact that he can make other people bulletproof on a whim and map out an entire mall just by standing in it, which is objectively much worse and potentially dangerous a thing not to do, but also Tim is already positive he’s going to miss that laugh like crazy every time he sees Kon with the mask on. 

Robin doesn’t get to see Kon like this at all, even when he lets the asshole eat both stupid boxes of cinnamon bread. 

“Dinner, yeah,” Kon says, grinning again and then taking off backwards across the sky, apparently unconcerned about their chances of hitting a building. Tim’s not really in a proper carry so much as just stretched out against him and wrapped up in his arms, but given the nature of how Kon’s powers work, an actual carry is obivously not really a concern, so . . . 

Oh, Tim realizes as Kon tips back just enough to be reclining in the air, still flying without any apparent care or concern for the aerodynamics of the situation or anything but staying more or less out of view of anyone on the street below. 

Avoiding the street view is good. 

The part where now he’s essentially laying on top of Kon is . . . less good, maybe. 

Maybe he won’t have to convince Kon to go supervillain, at least. Maybe Kon’s already there. 

“Where to, daddy?” Kon asks with a smirk, keeping one arm looped around Tim’s waist and folding the other behind his own head like he’s laying out in a lounge chair on the beach. Tim thinks longingly of smothering him and also of getting him to take down his TTK so he could bite a hickey or five into his neck. Maybe six. He could probably do six. 

Or seven. 

“Northeast towards Broad Street,” Tim says as he tips his head in the appropriate direction, then pulls up the camera again and snaps a quick shot of Kon’s smug smirk, which immediately breaks into a surprised laugh as the other flushes again. 

He takes a picture of that too. 

“You flirtin’ again already, man?” Kon asks with a sheepish little laugh, like the bastard has any room to talk. 

“The position’s pretty good for it, that’s all,” Tim says with a level of casualness he absolutely does not feel. Kon flushes darker and bites his lip again, still just barely grinning. Tim, ethically, has no choice but to take a few more pictures. 

“Oh my god,” Kon says, laughing again and unfolding the arm he has tucked behind his head to hide his eyes behind instead. Tim is maybe a little bit too aware of the line of his throat under the neck of his shirt, without his eyes and the sparkle there to be distracting him into a useless stupid mushbrained might-as-well-be-a-civilian, observationally-speaking. “I’m not a building, you absolute nerd!” 

“I said I liked people-watching too, didn’t I?” Tim points out reasonably, though mostly his brain’s occupied with the question of–“Hey. If you let down your TTK a bit, could a baseline-DNA human give you a hickey? Like, is that physically possible, or are you too Kryptonian for that?” 

“Oh my god,” Kon repeats, laughing harder even as the flush on his face spreads down his neck. Tim wonders how warm that might feel under his mouth. “I, uh–dunno, man. Maybe?” 

Tim silently resolves himself to finding literally any excuse to conduct that experiment and moves a hand to cup the side of Kon’s throat, eyeing it consideringly. Kon makes a slightly weird noise and visibly swallows, and Tim belatedly realizes that he’s paid literally no attention whatsoever to whether or not they’re about to hit a building or a flagpole or a roof this entire flight; he just assumed Kon had it handled. The Bat-paranoia kicks in and he glances up reflexively, and just as reflexively slides the pad of his thumb across Kon’s pulse. Their flight path is clear; they’re high enough to avoid most of the buildings in this area. Definitely still gonna need to keep an eye out for radio towers and billboards, but . . . 

Kon swallows again, the gesture a little bit rough this time. Tim feels the other’s throat flex against his palm. That sure is . . . that sure is a thing that Tim feels right there. That invulnerable throat flexing right there against his palm, and maybe not necessarily having to be invulnerable, if Kon didn’t want it to be. 

. . . . . . he already said he didn’t have time to learn anything new about himself tonight, dammit.

[suzukiblu]

WIP excerpt behind the cut for Derpsheep; obligatory sugar baby Kon. (( chrono || non-chrono ))

Kon laughs sheepishly, shakes his head, and then leans down and presses a kiss against the corner of his mouth. Tim boils alive. Like. Just a little. Then Kon straightens back up and gives him another grin before looking back down to the bag and digging into it. He comes up with the chocolates first, since they’re what Tim put on top, and grins wider again at the sight of them. 

“Dude, how much are you paying in shipping?” he asks with a laugh, shaking his head again. 

“Not that much,” Tim lies. It wouldn’t have been that bad if he hadn’t sprung for expedited, so he figures that counts as true. Like, arguably. From a certain point of view or whatever. 

Look, he’s spent more on less important things. 

Kon laughs again, then puts the chocolates in his coat pocket and pulls out the jewelry box, inspecting it curiously before flipping it open. 

“Oh, sick,” he says, looking delighted, which makes Tim feel as good as nailing a landing on the edge of a skyscraper, and then frowns again. “But how much was–” 

“You can’t tell me not to buy you things anymore,” Tim interrupts him as politely as he can. Kon pauses, then flushes again and ducks his head a little, smiling helplessly. 

“Okay,” he says, then bites his lip and stares down at the bag. “Um . . .” 

“Yes?” Tim asks. 

“I can kinda, uh . . .” Kon trails off, then looks embarrassed. “I mean, it feels like . . .” 

Right, Tim thinks. TTK probably does take away some of the element of surprise from unwrapping presents. 

“It’s fine if you don’t like it,” he says. “I just found, well . . . an option that wouldn’t wilt over dinner.” 

Kon looks very embarrassed. 

“You really didn’t have to,” he says, a little stilted. “I mean–you already . . .” 

Tim tilts his head. Patiently puts on what he’s decided to make his “you can’t tell me not to buy you things anymore” face. 

Kon turns red again, then pockets the jewelry box with the chocolates before pulling out the last gift to look at too. He opens the box gingerly, and stares into it for a long moment before taking the actual gift out. 

Tim really hopes he likes it. 

“You really didn’t have to,” Kon repeats as he turns it by the stem, his face still all flushed and his eyes and voice both just barely soft. 

It’s a slender little branch of blue orchids, all shiny and pretty. The company that makes them lacquers real flowers and then accents them in gold. So it’s still obviously an actual flower with the petals all visible under the lacquer, but the stems are gold-plated and the petals are edged in more gold, and the flowers themselves are preserved by the lacquer, so . . . yeah. 

He could’ve waited for the cul-de-sac and just started giving Kon fresh flowers like he’d originally planned, Tim guesses, but he’d stumbled across the site while looking for gift ideas and kinda just . . . gone from there, pretty much. He’d actually seen roses first, but the orchids had felt a little more . . . creative, maybe? And likelier to be to Kon’s tastes, given how obviously fondly he remembers Hawaii–and misses it, maybe, though that might be assuming a little much on Tim’s part. 

Even if it, unfortunately, doesn't miss him. 

It’s just . . . a hypothesis, really, that Kon misses Hawaii. Just going by certain things Kon’s been willing to say and show in front of Tim Drake, and hasn’t been willing to say or show in front of Robin or the team. 

So when Tim had seen the orchids, well . . . 

Blue orchids are a rarer color, apparently, and he’d just thought–well, Kon’s eyes are blue, and so is a significant percentage of his suit. And so is, obviously, the sky he flies in, and the water he might miss. And blue orchids are supposed to be symbols of rarity and uniqueness, so, uh–maybe it’s a bit much, but he’d just thought . . . 

Kon clearly wants to be seen as someone unique and individual, and clearly deserves to be, so . . . yeah. Well. 

It’d just fit, he’d thought. 

They’re supposed to represent sincerity, too, but that’s a whole other thing.

[suzukiblu]

NaNoWriMo fic, day one: obligatory sugar daddy Tim/sugar baby Kon AU.

Tim Drake had absolutely no intentions of ever becoming anyone's sugar daddy when he met Superboy.

This would have worked out better for him if Superboy had ever had an actual legal identity or an actual legal guardian or just . . . literally anything whatsoever in life. Ever. At all.

Just a bank account, even.

"You're working for Cadmus," Tim says slowly. "Cadmus, as in the lab that stole Superman's body and cloned him without his consent. Cadmus, which you had to break out of so they couldn't put mind control code words in your head."

"Yeah," Superboy replies like that's not literally insane. Tim stares at him.

"Why?" he asks incredulously.

"Food and shelter?" Superboy shrugs. "And I mean, I dunno, where else am I gonna go?"

Tim is not okay with this situation.

"What did Superman say?" he says.

"Just to like, keep an eye on things," Superboy says with another shrug. "Make sure they're not up to anything shifty."

Tim stares at him.

"Superman," he says. "Told you to just . . . 'keep an eye on' the dubiously ethical cloning lab. The specific dubiously ethical cloning lab that tried to put mind control code words in your head. Specifically."

"Yeah," Superboy confirms.

Alright, Tim is actually even less okay with this situation than he thought, apparently. Like, impressively less.

"Okay," he says. It is absolutely no kind of okay in any way whatsoever, of course, but he doesn't want to put Superboy on the defensive. That'd make effectively interrogating him a lot harder, for one thing. Cooperative subjects are best in these situations. "What are they paying you?"

"I mean, like, they gave me my own room and they're feeding me and whatever, so I don't really need much money," Superboy says. "There's a discretionary fund I can use if I need to go on an undercover mission or anything like that? But I'm not really the undercover type anyway."

"Sure," Tim says. So . . . no way for Superboy to save up to move out and get an out-of-lab life, then. Great. That's not fucked-up or crazy or horrible at all. "Do you like it there?"

"It's okay," Superboy says, shrugging again. "Better than literally everybody in Hawaii yelling at me every time they see my face, yeah?"

Tim wants to set the world on fire, but he's trying really hard not to go supervillain before he's thirty and he'd hate to throw out all that hard work.

"They just let me do whatever, mostly," Superboy adds. "They don't really care as long as I'm around when they need me."

He'll go supervillain as soon as Bruce dies, Tim promises himself. Just–he'll give his share of the eulogy at the funeral and then he'll blow up three-fourths of Arkham and the entire GCPD while Commissioner Gordon is on his lunch break. He can time that out, that'll be easy. And then he'll go and personally murder the Joker with the very specific combination of a rusty crowbar and a shrapnel bomb, and then he'll just . . . well, he'll just go with the flow from there, he figures. Do whatever feels natural.

Seriously, the world as it is does not deserve to exist. It really just does not.

Tim figures he can probably convince the rest of Young Justice to tag along for the whole supervillain thing and hopefully Dick and Steph and Barbara too, and ideally also Alfred, in the unfortunately likely event that he outlives Bruce. He's got time to lay the groundwork with them all and all, and also everything really is awful and horrible and really does deserve to burn.

"Are they sending you to school or anything? Or tutoring you?" Tim asks with what little scraps of hope he has left. Higher education would be . . . well, something, at least. And actually it probably wouldn't hurt for Superboy to learn a bit more about genetic engineering from the same place he got genetically engineered, just in case anything goes wrong with his DNA again. Cadmus should at least be good for that much, right?

"Ew, no, thank fuck," Superboy says, making a face. "Like I said, they mostly let me do whatever until something needs punched."

So . . . no furthered education or learning any usable job skills or making real money or literally anything that could, again, lead to Superboy ever getting any kind of an actual out-of-lab life established.

Great.

Just great.

"I see," Tim says.

"It's a pretty sweet gig, considering," Superboy says, and grins brightly at him. It's a very nice grin. Normally being faced with that particular grin would make Tim need to beat down the highly unprofessional urge to kiss it.

Right now, though, he's a little bit more concerned with the fact that his teammate is just . . . living in and working for a fucking lab. As a matter of course. Just as a thing.

And Superman of all people thinks that's . . . fine, for some reason? Like, normal and ethical and okay? Somehow? In some way?

What the actual fuck, Tim thinks to himself.

"You said Superman told you to keep an eye on things?" he asks.

"Yeah," Superboy says, his grin widening. "He took me to his fortress and asked me to do it there. Showed me around a bit, too."

"That sounds really interesting," Tim says, wondering in vague disbelief if that means Superman had never taken Superboy to the Fortress of Solitude before. He must've, right? And just . . . inexplicably not shown Superboy around then.

Yeah. Sure.

"It was awesome!" Superboy says with more enthusiasm than Tim's seen from him since they met Nina Dowd's . . . endowments, seemingly forgetting the need to be "cool" for long enough to lean forward in his seat and outright beam at him. Tim is gonna need a minute to recover from the sight of that expression, probably. "It's seriously freaking freezing up there, but there's so much cool shit in the place. Like, from all over the universe, but from Krypton, even! The only thing I'd ever seen from Krypton before was kryptonite!"

Tim considers moving up his supervillain timeline after all. Like. Just possibly. Just a little.

Maybe he can convince Bruce to take an early retirement off-planet and just go from there.

What the hell is wrong with Superman?

"Oh, wow, really?" Tim says, simultaneously pretending he didn't already know what Superman has in his fortress and trying not to be screamingly obvious about the internal calculations he's running on figuring out how to weaponize red sunlight. Or like, maybe he could look into learning some magic. That's technically an option. Probably more time-consuming and harder to hide the process of, though. Still, it's on the table.

"Yeah. He showed me some of it. Told me some stories and stuff, even," Superboy says, and that excited grin turns just a little bit shy and soft and somehow even more distracting than usual. He ducks his head just a little, and then that soft grin is more like a soft smile, and Tim suffers. "And I, uh–and he gave me something, too."

"What did he give you?" Tim asks, praying to God that the answer is "an emergency contact number" or "an allowance that can cover a semi-decent Metropolis apartment" or "an offer to live literally anywhere but Cadmus, including in the thirtieth century or on a hostile alien planet or inside an active volcano". He's technically an atheist, so the praying thing is probably moot, but times of desperation are times of desperation.

"A name," Superboy says, and his smile widens helplessly. "Like, you know, a real one."

Tim might hate Superman, he thinks. That might actually be a thing now.

Yeah, he's definitely going supervillain after Bruce dies and doesn't need an emotional support sidekick anymore. Better start stocking up on the kryptonite.

"That's great," he says with a very carefully not-forced smile of his own instead of anything more along the lines of "wait, you've been alive and active as a superhero for all this time and no one ever actually named you?!" Superboy would probably take it the wrong way, not in the least because that genuinely never actually occurred to him as being a thing before. Like–he really did just assume Superboy was keeping a lid on whatever his real name was for personal reasons or Superman reasons or something. "Are you allowed to tell me it, or is that a no-go?"

"Oh, yeah," Superboy says with a sheepish laugh, rubbing at his arm. "It's like, a Kryptonian name? Not like a secret identity one. It's, uh, Kon-El."

Of course it's not even a damn secret identity, Tim thinks in absolute frustration and abject loathing. Of course not! Why would it be?! Fuck forbid!

"I like it," he says, because he lies to Batman and therefore there is no fucking way that he's going to let Superboy–Kon–see any sign whatsoever of the metaphorical 9.9 on the Richter scale that is currently happening in his psyche. "It suits you."

"You think?" Kon grins all the wider. Tim can't even calm down enough to want to kiss him, except in the sense that he always wants to kiss him.

"I do," he says, and smiles at him again.

Kon smiles back.

Tim hates everything. All the things. There is nothing that Tim doesn't hate right now, except maybe Alfred's snickerdoodles because he might be having a nervous breakdown but he's not, like, criminally insane or whatever.

Yet.

"Yeah, it's kinda cool," Kon says, straightening up in his seat and then leaning back, clearing his throat and slipping his sunglasses back on like they're not in a literal cave right now. Tim doesn't call him on it, because he has a supervillain timeline to work out and that's much more important.

Also because the teammate he has an inadvisable crush on is in a much, much shittier situation than he ever realized and he has to reconcile that with his worldview and also his opinion of Superman. Tim doesn't especially idolize the man except in the sense of knowing he's one of the greatest heroes on Earth and a very, very good man that Bruce thinks incredibly highly of, one of the best men on the League and maybe even on the planet, but . . .

But if he's such a good man, then why the hell is Kon living in a lab that tried to mind-control him and why has he only just seen the Fortress of Solitude for the first time?

Why didn't he have a real name?

"So do we call you Kon or Kon-El now?" Tim asks, which is a bit of a senseless question but also at least a bit of a distraction. He wants to say this whole situation is a horrible idea, who the FUCK convinced you this situation was a good idea?!, but there is no possible way that Kon would respond well to that. Ever.

Also, Kon had a point. Where else is he gonna go?

Clearly not the Fortress of Solitude.

Seriously, would it be that hard for Superman to give him a room there? At least a place to stay sometimes, so he wasn't exclusively relying on the mind-control cloning lab for food and shelter and basic comforts?

"I think just Kon?" Kon says, frowning consideringly. "'El' is like Superman's last name, I guess? So I think just Kon."

"Makes sense," Tim says, internally seething. Superman gave him the "El" name but not a secret identity? A name from a dead civilization with a bit of sentimental value, maybe, but nothing usable on this planet? Fuck, you'd think Kon didn't already know his secre–

. . . Kon doesn't know Superman's secret identity, does he.

Tim had thought he was lying, when he'd said that stuff about Superman not having one, before. Thought it was supposed to be a cover or a misdirection or something. But Kon actually thinks that, doesn't he. And Superman has just . . . kept letting him think that.

Becoming a supervillain actually might be an underreaction, in retrospect.

"Just Kon sounds less formal anyway," Tim says instead of so just in theory, do you think tactile telekinesis could trigger a heart attack or stroke in a full-blooded Kryptonian, if you could REALLY concentrate on doing it? like not FATALLY, just dehabilitatingly?, because he still has some groundwork to do before they get that far into potential supervillainy. There's steps to the plan. The steps need to be followed. They're very important steps. "You don't want Bart full-naming you every time he's looking for the remote."

"Like he'd even bother, it's faster for him to turn the living room upside-down than actually ask anyway," Kon says with a laugh, dropping his head back on his neck. Tim has some thoughts about climbing into his lap and figuring out if the TTK makes him hickey-proof, and then buries them. Not appropriate. Not professional. Just not.

. . . technically, if Kon wanted a hickey, he could just let his TTK down and ask for–

Tim buries his thoughts deeper.

Much, much deeper.

"Point," he says. "So what time does Cadmus expect you back?"

"Dude, it's a job, not a boarding school," Kon says, giving him an amused look. "I don't have a curfew."

Tim, technically, hasn't followed his own curfew any way but accidentally once in his entire life, but for god's sake, is Cadmus even pretending to be raising a teenager or are they really just being that flagrant about ignoring all the child labor laws they so clearly do not give a fuck about? Like, there must be something illegal about this. There has to be.

If there's not, Tim will be adding "burn down Project Cadmus" to his list of supervillain plans to set up in advance. In red pen. Underlined.

Twice.

God, why is the world like this. Why are people like this?

"I guess that'd be convenient," Tim says, internally ranking various methods of combustion. "Though I guess it depends on the cafeteria hours, too."

"It's whatever, I can always eat later," Kon replies with a shrug. "I think I've still got a couple protein bars in my room anyway."

"Just protein bars?" Tim asks, mentally upping the amount of explosives he was considering going with. Cadmus is going to be a crater by the time he's done with it. "Don't you need more calories than that?"

". . . well, sort of," Kon says, folding his arms and looking very briefly embarrassed. "Superman doesn't have to eat, apparently, but, uh, guess I'm not Kryptonian enough for that. Actually I kinda need to eat more than normal humans, it's weird. Like. A lot more."

"I'm ordering pizza," Tim says, upping his mental explosives count again. "What do you want on it?"

"We're the only ones here," Kon says, looking puzzled.

"More pizza for us, then," Tim says.

[suzukiblu]

Thank-you sentences for Derpsheep; obligatory sugar baby Kon. (( chrono || non-chrono ))

Friday comes, and Tim may or may not be wearing his best non-funerary/non-gala slacks and also have bought a new button-down shirt and still feel like he’s not trying hard enough. More importantly, though, he’s brought a gift bag with a little box of macadamia chocolates from a Hawaiian company, a very expensive sapphire bracelet with a matching stud earring, and, also, one possibly dumb and ridiculous thing that Kon might think is stupid, but, well . . . 

It won’t wilt while they’re at dinner, at least, Tim figures. 

He arrives at the corner he’s supposed to meet Kon on fifteen minutes early and catches a glimpse of the other crossing the street towards him less than five minutes later. Tim makes a mental note to start showing up earlier himself, if that’s gonna be a habit. He doesn’t want Kon to end up standing around feeling awkward or like he’s left him hanging. 

Kon’s wearing shiny black boots and a long, loose red wool coat over those life-ruining strap-wrapped black leather pants and a thin gold necklace with a very tight dark gray turtleneck that Tim happens to know is sleeveless, because it’s something Tim bought him. Actually, it’s all something Tim bought him, so he guesses Kon didn’t spend his allowance on a date night outfit after all. Well, that’s fine, it’s not like– 

“Hey there, daddy,” Kon greets with a broad grin as he steps up onto the curb in front of him, and Tim tries to get over the existence of today’s eyeliner, which is both gold and winged, but absolutely does not and can not. Jesus. Just–Jesus. Also, there’s nail polish again, which is mostly red, but tipped with gold like a French manicure would be. And not professionally done, which means Kon almost definitely did it himself, so–

Then he actually registers what Kon just called him, live and in-person with his actual voice, and nearly just keels over dead right there. 

Oh god. 

“Hey, baby,” he manages with a smile, though it takes all his undercover training to sound normal about it. Then he thrusts the gift bag at him, trying not to panic. 

Kon turns pink and grins at him. 

He should’ve gotten him the ruby jewelry set, Tim thinks vaguely, feeling like he’s about to fall off the planet. It’d match the outfit better. 

“Hey,” Kon repeats happily, for some reason, then belatedly seems to notice the gift bag and peers down at it. Tim wonders what he was blushing over, if he didn't notice the gift. “Um–what’s this?” 

“It’s for you,” Tim says matter-of-factly, because he still very much needs and wants Kon in the habit of accepting things from him. 

“You didn’t have to, man,” Kon says, a brief flash of shy self-consciousness crossing his face. He takes the bag, though, so Tim’s going to call it a win. 

“I wanted to,” he says, and Kon turns even redder and grins wider, ducking his head. That still doesn’t actually hide his face from Tim–if anything, in fact, it just gives him a better view of it–but Tim is still definitely not going to be telling him that. 

“Can I open it?” Kon asks, biting his lip as he tugs at a corner of the tissue paper filling the bag. 

“Of course,” Tim says. “It’s yours. Do whatever you want with it.” 

Kon laughs sheepishly, shakes his head, and then leans down and presses a kiss against the corner of his mouth. Tim boils alive. Like. Just a little. Then Kon straightens back up and gives him another grin before looking back down to the bag and digging into it.

[suzukiblu]

Day twenty-one of fic NaNoWriMo, obligatory sugar daddy Tim/sugar baby Kon AU.

“Sure,” Tim says in a mostly-reasonable imitation of a normal person who is not in a good ten feet over their head, taking the seat Kon left him. Kon flashes him another grin and unzips his jeans. He is still wearing his suit underneath them. It still does not even slightly matter to Tim’s stupid idiot hormones. 

He tries not to stare at Kon stripping off his boots and jeans, but absolutely, undeniably fails. The situation is not improved when Kon turns his back towards him and smirks back over his shoulder at him. 

“Unzip me?” he asks, the bastard. Tim does not in any way believe he needs the help unzipping his suit, but also Tim is a stupid idiot with stupid idiot hormones and he does, in fact, lean forward on the bench and reach up to do so. He pulls Kon’s zipper down his spine and, miraculously, does not spontaneously combust in the process. 

New information: Kon doesn’t wear any kind of underlayer under his suit. At least not over his torso, anyway. Which Tim supposes shouldn’t be a surprise, but certainly is something he’s noticing right now. 

He can’t even decide if he’s hoping for him to be wearing underwear or not. He should be hoping for him to be wearing it, given they’re here to try on clothes and that’s therefore kind of necessary, but . . . 

Kon strips the rest of his suit off. He is, unfortunately, wearing boxer briefs. Very small and very tight boxer briefs, but boxer briefs all the same. Tim tries not to stare at Kon’s ass and then immediately encounters the larger problem of accidentally looking at Kon’s reflection in the changing room mirror, which offers the opportunity to stare at other things that belong to Kon. Like his chest. And his abs. And his Adonis belt and–

Fuck his life, Tim thinks feelingly, barely resisting the urge to cover his eyes before he can embarrass himself. He’s already embarrassing himself; it is way too damn late for anything like that to help. 

“What should I try on first?” Kon asks. Tim, in mute panic, grabs the first thing off the top of the pile and shoves it at him. Kon, unfortunately, accepts it. 

More unfortunately, it turns out to be a very clingy black T-shirt with a very deep V-neck. Kon doesn't have actual cleavage, obviously, but that T-shirt has not gotten the memo. 

And apparently neither have his pecs. 

Fuck, Tim thinks with great feeling, still barely resisting the urge to cover his eyes. Fuuuuuck. 

“Hmmm,” Kon says, tugging at the dip of the V-neck with a finger. “What do you think? My color or naw?” 

Tim is suffering. There is a hell and he is currently in it, right here and now. 

“Black isn’t a particularly daring color choice, most people look good in it,” he says, clearing his throat. “The fit’s nice, though.” 

“Fair enough,” Kon says, plucking at the collar again and then stripping the shirt off. While facing Tim. Directly. So Tim therefore has a front-row seat to his bare abs stretching and flexing and–

Jesus. Just–Jesus. 

“Next?” Kon asks, holding out an expectant hand and smirking at him. 

Bastard. 

Tim, in vengeance, hands over the leather pants. It immediately backfires, because Kon just smirks wider and steps right into them, and in fact the process of watching Kon get into leather pants is . . . well, it's a fucking process, alright. And then Tim is alone in a changing room with a shirtless Kon in very tight leather pants and absolutely no one else around to interrupt. Not a single convenient supervillain attack to be seen. 

Fuck, Tim reflects with great feeling. 

“Guess this still isn’t a very daring color choice, huh?” Kon asks, tugging casually at his own waistband. Tim's teeth would also like to do that, please. Like. He has never done that to anyone's waistband in his life, but he would like to start. Right now, ideally. “Maybe I should've gone for something else.” 

“They look alright,” Tim says, desperately trying not to choke and die. He may or may not have had to put one of the shopping bags in his lap. Kon seems unconcerned and just twists to check out his ass in the mirror. His ass which is in very tight black leather. With belts. And buckles. 

And straps. 

Tim is disproportionately fixated on the straps, maybe. 

“Take a picture, it'll last longer,” Kon tells him with a smug grin. 

“I . . . kinda want to?” Tim admits helplessly, then winces at himself. Oh, that was the literal opposite of smooth. Kon laughs anyway, though.

“Oh do you now,” he purrs teasingly. “Is that why you were so concerned about getting me a phone with a good camera, pretty boy?” 

“. . . technically it only matters if my phone has a good camera in that situation,” Tim points out, and Kon actually pouts at him. It’s clearly a put-on, since he’s still half-smirking, but it’s a pout all the same. 

“Aw, you don't want me to send you any pics, Tim?” he asks. 

Tim might be, like, dead now. That might be a thing. He might just be dead. 

“Uh,” he says, blinking rapidly a few times in a desperate attempt to make his brain do literally anything but go down that particular avenue.

“These are a little tight, though,” Kon muses casually as he looks back down to the pants in the mirror, and then smooths a hand down his thigh because he apparently wants Tim to die. The bright fluorescent lights glint across his earring and make those inhumanly blue eyes even more undeniably inhumanly blue, and also make all his muscle definition all very, very visible. 

Technically, Kon has muscles like these because he's a genetically-enhanced half-alien who's all jacked up on solar power. Tim is perfectly aware of that fact. A normal unenhanced human being built like this would probably need an assist from steroids and a ridiculously-specialized diet and to basically never leave the gym. And also probably they'd be at least a little bit dehydrated, to look this cut. 

Tim can tell himself all that all that he likes, but Kon still looks like the bodybuilder edition of Playgirl right now. 

“Since when do you mind tight?” he asks. 

“I don't,” Kon says, sparing him another smirk. “But if I didn't make sure to keep my TTK on them 24/7, they'd probably rip. Leather's a little less forgiving than spandex, you know?” 

Tim is fairly sure Kon said some words after “rip”, but fuck if he could tell anyone. He couldn't tell anyone with a gun to his head. He couldn't tell Batman. 

Fucking hell. 

“Then I'll buy you another pair,” he says reflexively. Kon laughs, ducking his head. He is still shirtless. Very, very shirtless. 

“Man, I don't care what you think you owe me, you cannot possibly wanna buy me this much stuff,” he says. 

Tim tries to figure out how to say “you're my teammate and ally and you deserve to be somewhere safe and taken care of and have everything you need” without actually saying “you're my teammate and ally and you deserve to be somewhere safe and taken care of and have everything you need”. It's difficult, mostly because the alternate and equally true answer is “I think I'm kind of getting off on this, actually”. Which is actually kind of weird and questionable of him even if Kon is flirting with him and acting kind of–

Yeah, he really needs to stop being weird about this. 

“I have the money,” he says reasonably. “It’s not any harder for me than using your powers is for you. And I like doing it.” 

“You like doing it?” Kon says, tilting his head. Possibly Tim should’ve phrased that differently. Or just not said it at all, more like. 

“Yeah,” he says, then quickly changes the subject in self-defense. “And you did me a favor. I want to pay it back.” 

“There’s ‘paying it back’ and there’s ‘signing a lease’, man,” Kon says, raising an eyebrow at him. “Like, you offered me an apartment.” 

“If you’d let me I’d give you a fully-furnished apartment, bills and expenses, and an allowance,” Tim says wryly, and belatedly realizes that last one maybe sounds a little bit patronizing or weird when Kon–pauses.

“An allowance?” he repeats, just barely frowning. 

“Yes,” Tim says, because fuck it, he’s committed now and trying to backtrack would just make it more awkward. If he acts like that was a normal offer to make, maybe Kon will buy it. It’s not like he doesn’t know his initial socialization and education came from a bunch of weird nerds in a lab. “You know, rent and bills and groceries and a little extra, so you don’t have to call me up every time you want something.” 

“Because I saved your life?” Kon says, fidgeting with the button of his pants for a moment. Tim pretends not to notice. Pretends very hard not to notice. It’s . . . arguably a success. Maybe. 

“Yes,” Tim lies. Kon’s saved his life plenty of times; it’s really not relevant to wanting to see him actually properly taken care of and not just ditched in a lab without any damn windows in it. 

Seriously. Kon is solar-powered and Cadmus is underground. What advantage-taking idiots thought he belonged there? 

“Just that?” Kon asks, biting his lip. Tim . . . pauses. 

That’s a weird question, he thinks. It is, right? 

He’s not sure how to answer it. He lies to Batman, so that’s not a concern, but . . .

But. 

“Not just that,” he says after a moment, and just . . . doesn’t elaborate. Kon reddens a little, and then, weirdly, smiles a little. Tim does his damnedest to deal with the sight of him half-in civilian clothes and looking very, very touchable. Just–very close and touchable. He could just . . . reach right out. And touch him. 

Kon’s just . . . very close right now, is all. Like . . . very, very close. 

Fuck. 

“Hi,” Kon says with a little smile, then steps forward right in-between Tim’s knees still half-dressed in black leather and belts and buckles and straps. Tim almost falls off the bench. 

“Hi?” he tries. He very suddenly feels like he might be cooking in his own skin and maybe needs a couple decades to recover before he actually does die here. Because he definitely feels like he's about to die right now, oh god. Did Ivy pollen the mall? Maybe Ivy pollened the mall. Maybe–

Kon leans down over him and into his personal space, and Tim ends up with his back pressed against the changing room wall. 

Nope, never mind. This is all him. This is exclusively a Tim problem. All Tim all the way. All Tim all the time. 

Fuuuuuck.

“Uh,” he chokes in mortification, feeling his face absolutely burn. Kon braces a hand against the wall and very literally bats his eyes at him, the fucking bastard. He is . . . so attractive. So, so attractive. Like every kind of attractive Tim can currently envision and then some. Why is he so attractive? Why is he this far up in Tim’s space? Why is he–

Oh, fuck, Tim thinks. 

“Oh my god, I in no way meant to make you think this was, like, a condition or–!” he starts to sputter in horror, and Kon cuts him off by putting a hand on his shoulder and pushing him up tighter against the wall with a very, very pleased smirk. 

“Shut up and kiss me, you weird little nerd,” he says, and then leans in close enough to be kissed, his eyes soft and half-lidded and mouth still curved into that same pleased smirk. Tim’s brain shorts out entirely. Tim’s brain effectively electrocutes itself, actually. 

Oh god, he thinks feebly. 

He can’t kiss Kon, obviously. That would be a very stupid thing to actually do. Flirting and joking around is one thing, but actually kissing him . . . 

Kon bites his lip, a little flicker of uncertainty reflecting in his eyes. Tim has been in literal death traps that were less upsetting than that little flicker. 

“Okay,” he manages, useless and breathless, and then–like an idiot–kisses him.

[suzukiblu]

Day six of fic NaNoWriMo, obligatory sugar daddy Tim/sugar baby Kon.

"You're bluffing," the thief says flatly.

"And you're fucking stupid if you think this is the play that's getting you out of here," Kon snorts, tapping a foot against the floor. "C'mon, man, give it up. I've got plans tonight." 

"Use the artifact!" the alleged "Mark" yells at the thief holding it. 

"Right!" said thief says, then . . . pauses, and looks embarrassed. "How do I . . . do that?" 

Kon looks incredibly unimpressed. Tim empathizes. Deeply. 

"You guys need a minute there?" Kon asks, raising an eyebrow. 

"Shut up!" Mark snaps at him. "Just use it, Lisa!" 

"I thought you said no names–" 

"Use it!" 

"Uh, right!" 

The thief chucks the little clay goat at Kon. Tim is genuinely embarrassed for this entire crew. 

Kon catches the goat one-handed, which is kind of a stupid idea, but letting it smash on the floor admittedly wouldn't look great. People over property, obviously, but Kon also historically has issues with property damage and letting the bad guys smash up ancient artifacts is not the best plan in general anyway. Especially given how often said ancient artifacts have ghosts or curses or apocalypses locked inside them. 

"Lisa!" the thieves all yell in horror.

"Was this the whole plan?" Kon asks, making a show of inspecting the goat. "Like, was this it? I can come back later, if you're still cooking on that."

Tim muffles a laugh with a snort. Kon definitely caught it, though, judging by his smug smirk. 

"Shut up, wannabe!" the thief still holding a gun to Tim's head snarls, which reminds Tim he should be pretending to care about the gun currently being held to his head. Honestly, he would in Gotham, but the only way this moron is shooting anybody is by accident. 

. . . admittedly, that is a concern, given the trigger discipline issue. Hm.

"Killing me would probably count as felony murder, just so you know," Tim mentions, glancing around the thieves. "Which you could all be charged with, not just whoever actually shot me. Plus I'm pretty sure stealing objects of cultural heritage from a museum is a federal crime."

He's completely sure of all that, actually, for obvious reasons, but he has to at least pretend to be a civilian here. Like, some effort needs to go into that illusion, if for no other reason than to avoid a Bat-lecture from Bruce or, worse, a Bat-"I'm not mad, just disappointed" from Dick. 

Or, worst, Alfred might make disapproving shortbread instead of approving jammy dodgers for post-patrol tonight. That'd be really unfortunate. Tim could really use an approving jammy dodger tonight. He's already going to have to write up a very annoying incident report of this situation as it is, and also deal with the mortification of getting his neck saved by a Super. There is no dignity in that. At all. 

He is definitely never telling the team his secret identity. At least not until he's absolutely positive Kon hasn't inherited any of Superman's eidetic memory, anyway. He's ninety-nine percent sure he hasn't, but that last percent is a definite concern right now. 

"No one asked your opinion, brat!" Mark snaps, though a few of the other thieves now look extremely uneasy. Tim makes another mental note about their crew's obvious lack of prep time and general planning and continues to be embarrassed for them. Museum robberies in Gotham are themed events with careful research and preparation involved, and frankly usually involve more thoughtful effort than whatever gala they may or may not be crashing did. Smash and grab is for convenience stores and small-timers. And these guys are definitely small-timers, but this is equally definitely not a convenience store.

Metropolis is so weird. Why anyone even bothers doing petty crime in it at all is beyond Tim. Maybe they're just banking on Superman being more concerned with natural disasters and alien invasions and rescuing cats from trees, which is a valid strategy. Same theory as splitting up and making a cohesive group into multiple targets.

"He has the idol!" Lisa hisses, glaring at Kon like she's not the one who threw it at him to begin with. Tim gets a gun barrel jammed into his temple again. He has no idea why Trigger Discipline: What Not To Do thinks that's, like . . . a productive thing to do. At this rate he's going to get a bruise or something.

Well, he's not actually doing it hard enough to hurt, admittedly, though Tim does keep expecting it to. The guy looks like he's putting his back into it, but the impacts continue not to actually hurt, so Tim supposes he's just trying to put on a show here. 

Well, at least he's putting in some effort, Tim supposes. That's something. 

"I really do have plans tonight, you know," Kon reminds them, raising an eyebrow at the thieves again. 

"I would appreciate you delaying those, actually," Tim mentions. "If you don't mind, I mean." 

"Oh, yeah, don't sweat it, dude," Kon says, waving him off. "These people are annoying but I'm not gonna ditch out on you here, that's not your fault." 

"Don't ignore us!" one of the unnamed thieves yells. "And give the idol back!" 

"I have no idea why you would expect me to do that," Kon says. 

"I'll shoot!" the thief holding Tim threatens, jamming the gun barrel into his head again. 

"I mean, I'm pretty sure that dude was right about the felony murder thing, so maybe don't?" Kon says, inspecting the little clay goat again. "Hm. This thing is actually kinda cute." 

"It is, isn't it," Tim agrees. "I thought it looked like a kid's toy."

"Oh yeah, I can see that," Kon says, squinting assessingly at it. "Like those chunky toddler ones?" 

"Yeah, like those," Tim confirms with a nod. "Fisher-Price, Duplo, that kind of thing." 

"I'll take your word on that one, man, my 'toddler' stage only lasted about half a day and I was sedated for it," Kon replies in amusement. Tim seethes internally and thinks very uncharitable thoughts about Cadmus. 

"I said I'll shoot!" the thief holding him says furiously, tightening his arm across Tim's neck. It's still not actually enough to hurt, but again, Tim appreciates seeing a little more effort. "Give us the idol, you stupid brat!" 

"I'm trying to help you out here," Kon says, looking exasperated. "You're just making shit worse for yourself the longer you keep this up. Put down the gun and let the guy go, you'll get a way lighter sentence." 

"Fuck you!" the thief shouts. "The power of the idol will protect us!" 

"The idol that I am currently holding, you mean?" Kon says, hefting it meaningfully. "The one that is in specifically my possession and not yours?" 

Tim does understand that talking people down is the preferred approach and Kon can't actually super-speed this problem away, but Kon could at least pretend to be taking this seriously. From his perspective, there's a civilian hostage with a gun to their head and an angry criminal with their finger on the trigger, but he's acting like there isn't any danger in the situation at all.

Tim gets the posturing thing and the general "cooler than thou" attitude Kon likes to present, but it's definitely not making any of the thieves calm down. Like, not at all is it making any of the thieves calm down. 

This incident report is going to be very annoying to write. 

"It's not yours!" Lisa shrieks at him. 

"You literally threw it at me," Kon says. "I only have it because you threw it at me. Also pretty sure it's not yours either, given all the screaming alarms and broken glass and the smashed-in wall I am currently standing in the wreckage of."

Tim starts wondering if maybe he should revisit his "tripping" plan. He doesn't really want to pull any Robin-esque moves in front of Kon, but also dying would really fuck up all that hard work he's put into being Bruce's emotional support sidekick. Also two dead Robins in a row could not possibly end well. Especially in such a stupid way. Especially in Metropolis. 

"You don't even know what you're holding, you idiot!" Lisa fumes.

"A toddler toy, I thought we established," Kon says. "'Doopler' or something?"

"Duplo," Tim corrects, internally calculating tripping angles. 

"That one, yeah," Kon amends. "Doppo." 

Tim, resignedly, thinks his determined commitment to pointlessly fucking up is adorable. Also still hates Cadmus and has the irrational urge to buy him a teddy bear or something, although Kon would definitely just think he was fucking with him if he did.

Maybe he could just smuggle one into his room and disavow all knowledge of its existence. That's an option. 

"Give us the idol now!" the thief holding Tim snarls, his face twisting in rage. 

"Yeah, no," Kon says. 

"You little–!" the thief starts to yell, and then his trigger finger slips. Tim knows this because the gun goes off right next to his ear. 

And right against his temple. 

Half the room screams and the thief yells and drops the gun, recoiling in horror. It goes off again as it hits the floor and a bullet shatters a historically-significant vase the way one should have shattered Tim's personally-significant skull. 

What the fuck?

"Shit, sorry, that was probably kinda loud," Kon says apologetically, wincing a little but otherwise looking completely unphased by all of that. Tim blinks, very slowly, and attempts to restore his resting heart rate. It's not a particularly successful attempt.

"Yeah, kinda," he says.

"Sorry, sound waves are harder to block," Kon apologizes, pointing at his own ear with his free hand, and Tim remembers the other's total lack of concern for any threat to civilian life this whole time and realizes that was because, from Kon's perspective, there wasn't any actual threat.

Huh. 

Well, that explains why neither the gun barrel nor the being choked thing actually hurt at any point, doesn't it.

"Oh," Tim says, looking down at the floor that they are, in fact, all still standing on. "Tactile telekinesis?"

"You've heard of it?" Kon says, looking pleased. 

"Once or twice," Tim says, managing not to say it too dryly. Kon looks even more pleased. "I didn't know you could use it like that, though." 

"Practice makes perfect," Kon replies smugly.

[suzukiblu]

Day nineteen of fic NaNoWriMo, obligatory sugar daddy Tim/sugar baby Kon AU.

. . . huh, Tim thinks as he watches Kon rub his thumb over the goat's soft and fluffy fur, suddenly reminded of the cashmere. Okay, maybe his hypothesis about Kon's possible appreciation for nice textures is actually a thing, then. Noted and taken into evidence. 

“It's . . . cute,” Kon says, ducking his head a little and still slowly rubbing his thumb back and forth across the goat's fur as he looks down at it again, his face still all red. Tim makes a mental note about maximizing the amount of nice textures in Kon's life. He is gonna buy him sheets with a very high thread count, just to start. “Um–thanks, man.” 

“You're welcome,” Tim says as he has the incredibly weird thought that Kon has probably never actually owned an actual toy before. Like, maybe video games and things like that? He’s pretty sure he's heard Kon mention a few video games he likes before, now that he's thinking about it, but in retrospect he doesn't know if he even owns a console of his own or just played them with someone else at some point or . . . who knows, really? 

Like, Tim didn't decide to buy him a toy because of that, obviously, he really was just thinking of the idea as a cute little hopefully-the-right-kind-of-flirty reminder of how they “met”, but . . . 

It's a weird thought, is all.

. . . also, additional mental note, he should make sure to buy Kon a console if he doesn't already have one. And maybe a handheld system too, and obviously whatever games he wants for both. Maybe a couple spare controllers in case he wants to have anyone over, Tim has no idea, but better safe than sorry. 

“Let’s pay,” he says, redistributing the shopping bags between both hands again and then nodding towards the register. “Do you like video games?” 

“Sure,” Kon says, glancing sidelong at him again as they head for the counter. He’s doing that a lot, it feels like, though Tim isn’t sure why yet. Just intel to absorb, for right now. “Who doesn’t like video games?” 

“Do you have any?” Tim asks, and Kon looks–embarrassed, almost? Weirdly? 

“I can’t exactly have you over to play, man. No offense, it’s like a security clearance thing with the lab,” he says, which is not where Tim was going with that at all and is sort of . . . flustering, actually. Like, to hear, he means. He’s trying to buy things for Kon, not invite himself over to, like . . . pester him for attention or whatever. 

“Yeah, you'd be kind of hard to explain to my dad,” he agrees, putting on a wry expression. Kon's mouth tightens for a second, for some reason, and then he smiles awkwardly in his direction, not quite meeting his eyes. Tim represses a frown, wondering what that’s about. 

“Usually am, yeah,” Kon says. 

“Well, once we get you a place of your own, that’ll solve that problem,” Tim says reasonably as they wait in line together, though obviously he doesn’t really expect Kon to have him over or–

“You’d actually wanna come over if I had my own place?” Kon asks hesitantly. “Like–to hang out or whatever?” 

. . . Tim wonders who exactly ground all of Kon’s usually-boundless confidence into the dirt, because he’d just like to have a word with them. Or shove a doomsday weapon up their ass; whichever’s more convenient at the time. Considering how Kon usually acts, Tim doesn’t even want to think about how shitty someone had to be to get a reaction like that out of him. 

“I would,” he says. “We could order in and play something, maybe.” 

“I don’t actually have a console or anything. Shit, I don’t even have a TV,” Kon admits. “Which is not a request, for the record, just a statement.” 

“Okay,” Tim says, which as a response is something he’s just gonna let Kon interpret however he likes. He could just have a TV and console delivered to Cadmus for him, probably. Although he doesn’t actually know how big Kon’s room is, so in retrospect maybe that’ll be something to buy once they get to the stage where Kon’s picking out furniture for his new apartment/house/cul-de-sac. Easier to size and scale correctly that way, Tim figures. 

God, how big is Kon’s room? Is it just a room? Like a dorm or something? Is it at least actual normal bedroom-sized? 

. . . he really, really hopes it’s not a barracks situation. 

“I mean it,” Kon says as Tim pays for the goat and they leave the store. “Like, this was really cool of you, but you’ve definitely done enough. I didn’t do anything that special, you know?” 

“I feel like I’m the one who gets to value your effort in saving my life,” Tim says. “Like, monetarily and all. As a whole fiscal thing.” 

“It really wasn’t a big deal, though,” Kon insists. “Like, I didn’t risk my neck or anything. It wasn't even hard.” 

“You put in the time to learn how to do that with your TTK to begin with, even from halfway across the gallery floor,” Tim says. “Just because it was easy to do then doesn’t mean it was easy to learn to begin with. I think it’s really impressive that you even figured out you could do that to begin with.” 

“I mean–well, yeah, I guess,” Kon says, ducking his head as his face flushes again. “I just . . . like, it took a while to figure out how to do it right, definitely. So I wouldn’t say impressive.” 

“If you’re trying to be modest, maybe don’t lead with ‘I worked really hard on improving myself and it worked really well’,” Tim says, flashing him a wry little smile. Kon turns even redder, then grins sheepishly at him. 

“Look, TTK is badass, but it’s way less impressive than punching a giant asteroid into gravel,” he says. “Or superspeeding through all the bad guys in a microsecond.” 

“Why?” Tim asks, tilting his head. “Lots of people can punch an asteroid in half. You could break it down into its component parts and also make sure none of said parts escaped into the atmosphere or crashed any satellites. And you don’t need superspeed when you can keep the bad guys from even moving to begin with, right?” 

“Huh?” Kon says, looking–startled, a little. Tim’s been doing his research, but also just thinking–plus he's pretty sure that talking up TTK as a power is just about the best possible way to get Kon to be into Tim Drake for as long as possible, so . . . 

“I’m just saying, you seem really versatile. Like, you’re obviously not just a bruiser,” he says reasonably, though the more time he's spent trying to think about TTK lately, the more aware he's become that Kon tries very hard to be one whenever possible. Like–much more often than he actually should, in fact. “Your powers are really flexible, from what I’ve noticed. You can be a scalpel and a hammer. Possibly simultaneously, depending on your multitasking skills, I don’t really know how that works.” 

“Oh,” Kon says, the startled expression turning flustered even as he grins a little helplessly and ducks his head, twisting the handles of the shopping bag the clerk put the goat in around his fingers. “Uh, I mean, it depends, but . . . kinda, I guess.” 

Okay, well–he looks a little less boisterous and smug than Tim would've expected him to get over direct compliments to his TTK, honestly, but he does still seem flattered. Tim had just been prepared for annoying bragging and overblown pride as a reaction, not that helpless little grin Kon's currently trying to hide. So that's . . . weird, yeah. Huh. 

“Well, I think it's impressive,” he informs him with an easy shrug, and watches maybe a little bit too curiously as Kon's grin widens and he ducks his head lower. He looks so–not proud or arrogant, still, but pleased. 

It's definitely weird. 

Tim can't pretend there isn't an equally weird part of him that thinks it's cute, though. It's a little strange being the one hyping up the exact same superpower Kon's usually incapable of shutting up about while he tries to downplay it, but he guesses it's not that different from being the one carrying most of the bags right now. Just a little bit of a temporary role reversal while Kon's wearing a soft cashmere sweater instead of his usual heavy leather jacket and Tim's not wearing a mask. 

Well–at least not a domino, anyway. It gets a little more complicated going with the metaphorical definition, obviously. 

“I'm still buying you lunch whatever you say,” he says. “And a bigger wardrobe. You can't always show up in your superhero gear, somebody's gonna notice you eventually.” 

“Geez, man, how many times are you planning to see me in civvies?” Kon says, and if his accompanying laugh didn't sound a little forced, Tim would assume Kon was saying he was going to be bored of him before that was a concern. That laugh makes it sound more like Kon thinks it’s likelier that Tim is going to get bored of him, though. 

No, Tim is pretty sure that's wishful thinking on his part. It's too tempting to attribute evidence like that to mean something he'd like it to mean, is all. 

“I don't know,” he says, giving Kon a smile. “How many times are you planning to let me?” 

Kon stares at him for a moment, turns red, and then laughs self-consciously and looks away. 

His flirting standards are still extremely low, yeah. Thank god, because Tim absolutely sucks at this.

[suzukiblu]

Day twenty-three of fic NaNoWriMo, obligatory sugar daddy Tim/sugar baby Kon.

So alright, Tim may have made some miscalculations here. Or at least one very serious miscalculation, anyway. Kon is a hopeless flirt who always wants attention and to be the most interesting person in the room, and so perhaps inserting Tim Drake into his life as a person determined to give him attention and treat him like the most interesting person in the room while also flirting back was not, in fact, the best plan.

Or, more succinctly: Tim is a fucking idiot. 

After the mall, where Tim nearly fell off that bench twice more and Kon showed him everything he’d picked out to try on and Tim bought him literally every single piece of it that fit, some of it in multiple colors, and Kon, the bastard, then decided to wear the strap-covered leather pants and S-shield crop top out into actual public for the rest of their not-date, because he is, again, a bastard who Tim had to eat lunch with in the food court while he was smugly preening and peacocking in his stupid leather pants and crop top–after the mall, Tim realized he had a problem, and that problem was a) everything about Superman and Cadmus but especially actually-claimed-to-be-a-decent-person Superman and also b) Kon might actually like him as a person. Like. Genuinely and actually like him. 

That is definitely not something Tim planned for. Not in one single solitary contingency plan did he ever even consider “Kon actually liking Tim Drake as a person” as being a potential issue. Kon should have better taste than that, for one thing. Tim Drake is a photography nerd and a nerd-nerd and he's not all that interesting or attractive. He has weird taste in video games and only likes the role-playing games that literally nobody actually plays. And he isn't even that good at skateboarding! 

It has occurred to Tim, perhaps, that while Kon definitely is and always has been a flirt, he may have been basing his previous personal assumptions about how "serious" any more focused forms of flirting have been less on Kon himself and more on other people's reactions to said flirting. That it might not be Kon who's getting bored and moving on at the drop of a hat. 

Meaning, for all he knows Kon only really hits on people he's actually interested in and is simultaneously absolutely attention-starved enough to devote himself to anyone who so much as implies any kind of reciprocal interest. 

So that's . . . something to take under consideration, possibly. And be wary of, possibly. 

Except . . . 

It's kind of bad that Tim wants to just lean into it, isn't it. That he wants to–wants to encourage it. 

That he wants to devote himself back to that devotion in turn and see just how far it goes. 

Yeah, that cannot be a healthy thought process to be having, under the circumstances. 

But Tim's having it, all the same. And it wouldn't be that bad, would it? He actually does like Kon, for starters. He's not trying to use him or take advantage of him. Manipulate him a little, yeah, obviously, but Tim is pretty sure he's literally incapable of not manipulating the people he cares about at this point in his life, so . . . 

Possibly he should work on that? Like, come to think. 

But that's a later-problem. Somewhere between now and supervillainy. 

Anyway, Superman decided it was perfectly fucking fine to leave Kon in a literal fucking lab that wasn't even paying or educating him or anything, so Tim feels pretty secure in his current moral high ground. He is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of this situation and he has absolutely no reservations about that fact. 

At least as long as Kon's happy, anyway. 

Tim could maybe make him happy, he's realizing. Like . . . if Kon really does like him like that, he means. He could get him a homey little place in Gotham, like a studio downtown or maybe a small estate in Bristol, and he could take him on dates to actually nice places, and he could hang out with him on the weekends and play whatever video games he's into. They could actually spend time together where Kon doesn't think he has to be either “cool” or just like Superman, and where Tim doesn't have to be professional and emotionally distant. Time where Kon could be a normal guy and Tim wouldn't have to wear a mask. 

It's . . . tempting. 

Really, really tempting. 

Anyway, that's why Tim is currently planning the nicest and least-ethical date of his life while on patrol with Nightwing. Japanese food is still probably his best bet, since neither Gotham nor Metropolis is exactly spoiled for Hawaiian food and actually flying Kon all the way to Hawaii might be coming on a little bit too strong for a first date, and obviously he's not going to make Kon fly him there. He's the one planning this date, and he will not be cheating said planning or skimping on the budget by taking advantage of anyone's superpowers. 

Besides, Kon still doesn't actually have superspeed so it'd probably take like eight hours to get there. At least six, depending on the weather and the headwind. And it wouldn't exactly make for prime small-talk time, either. 

So yeah, Japanese food is sounding better and better. The only Hawaiian food Tim's actually tracked down around here with decent reviews is a food truck, and that's just not “nice first date” vibes. He promised Kon someplace nice for their actual official first date, and he is gonna deliver on said “nice” or die trying. 

Possibly literally, considering. 

“You seem a little distracted, baby bird,” Dick says as he pulls him up out of the filthy waters of the Gotham River. Tim considers explaining Kon's thighs to him, then resolves to never, ever explain Kon's thighs to him. 

“Sorry,” he says. “I have a YJ-related op to plan and I'm having trouble keeping my mind off it.” 

“Understandable,” Dick says, then yanks them both behind a dumpster as Two-Face's latest crop of dichotomous thugs catch up again and bullets start flying. “Maybe right now is not the ideal time for that, though?” 

Tim wonders if Bludhaven has decent Hawaiian food. 

“Valid,” he says. “Hey, do you think a planetarium is a stupid date idea?” 

“That depends entirely on who the date is with,” Dick says, pulling out his escrima sticks. Tim takes the cue to grab and extend his bo. “Nothing’s stupid if it'd make the person you're taking happy. Four o'clock.” 

“Thanks,” Tim says as he whips a birdarang into the gun hand of the guy running up behind them. Dick has a point, really, but unfortunately not a point that is helpful when planning a date with a teammate Tim actually still doesn’t know all that much about the interests and hobbies of. He knows Kon is interested in Krypton, but that doesn’t mean he’s interested in astronomy or space in general. It’s likelier he only cares about Krypton because of Superman, and maybe his own DNA. 

Tim remembers Kon saying he’d never seen anything from Krypton but kryptonite before, which means he is in fact the person who introduced Kon to the first piece of Krypton he ever saw and he did it in an attempt to take him out while Kon was under Poison Ivy’s influence, which is frankly terrible but not as terrible as the fact Superman only just introduced him to anything else about Krypton. 

On that note, Tim needs to work on those plans for weaponized red sunlight this weekend. Maybe after he gets Japanese food with Kon and embarrasses himself by taking him to the planetarium. 

Would he like the aquarium, maybe? It might remind him of Hawaii, and Hawaii probably still feels more like home to him than anywhere else does, so it’s at least a valid hypothesis. Then again, he probably preferred the beach and sky to the marine life. Admittedly, Tim doesn’t actually know that, so it’s still a possibility. 

“I didn’t know you were seeing anyone,” Dick says. 

“I’m not,” Tim only technically lies, whipping another series of birdarangs around the corner of the dumpster, along with a few smoke pellets. They take the cover and run for better positions. “I’m theorizing, that’s all.” 

“Theorizing a date you don’t have anyone to take on?” Dick asks in amusement. “Is that a thing you do a lot of, baby bird?” 

“No,” Tim definitely lies. “I was just thinking about when I used to go out with Spoiler and how to translate that to civilian dating. It’s . . . an issue. Especially after how things went with the last civilian I tried to date.” 

Not that Kon’s a civilian, obviously, but he needs to keep thinking Tim Drake is one. Therefore, patrol dates are still out. And really wouldn’t count as taking him anywhere “nice” anyway, really. Tim needs to step up his game. At least, like, undercover at a gala or something. Or maybe on a yacht. 

Actually, maybe Kon would like to go to a yacht party? Does Kon like boats? Did he do boats in Hawaii? Was that a thing? 

Possible option to research, again. Note to self. 

“Not dating civilians helps,” Dick offers helpfully, then leaps into the air with the kind of height most people couldn’t get off a rocket-powered springboard and comes down in the middle of a cluster of disoriented goons with his sticks already electric and crackling. Tim is both incredibly jealous and duly impressed. “Just in my experience, mind!” 

“Please explain to me who in the community you think I could possibly date when B won’t even let me tell Young Justice my first name or be seen in public with the team at all,” Tim says dubiously, following the path he’s cleared and sweeping up a few stragglers with his staff as he does. It’s one thing not to tell a civilian you’re a superhero, but to not tell another superhero about your civilian life . . . “Any suggestions. Go right ahead.” 

“. . . maybe you should just go ask Spoiler to take you back, buddy,” Dick says with a bit of a wince, not unsympathetically. 

“That would incredibly stupid of me, seeing as we came to a mutual agreement that we shouldn’t date specifically because B wouldn’t let me tell her my name,” Tim says dryly.

“So anyway, civilians!” Dick says brightly, doing a very complicated and fancy-looking backflip that somehow ends up in a roundhouse kick that takes out three guys at once and then landing feet-first on a fourth’s head, because Nightwing is a terrifying badass like that. Tim, again, is jealously impressed. “I hate to say it but you need to case-by-case basis this, Robin, there’s no ‘one size dates all’, you know?” 

“That’d be a lot more convenient,” Tim sighs, jabbing his staff into a few joints and then tripping one of the more dogged grunts with it. She hits the ground face-first with a yelp and the distinct crunch of a breaking nose. Tim might feel a bit bad about that if she and her whole crew weren’t actively trying to murder them for the crime of inconveniencing an arms deal. That seems like a very disproportionate response to him, honestly. When he’s running the Gotham underworld, he’s going to make it very clear to his foot soldiers that unnecessary escalation is not actually a useful long-term survival strategy. It just doesn’t go well, historically speaking. “What if I just throw money at them? Is throwing money at them a valid strategy?” 

“Not even slightly,” Dick says dryly. 

Tim thinks that’s probably not true under these specific circumstances, though he supposes offering fiscal security isn’t the best first move in flirting. Probably not romantic enough or whatever. 

Tim thinks taking care of someone for the entire rest of their life is perfectly romantic, actually, but fine, he’ll buy some damn aquarium tickets and then do the bank fraud. 

Nobody wants to commit these days.

[suzukiblu]

Day twenty of fic NaNoWriMo, obligatory sugar daddy Tim/sugar baby Kon AU.

“Maybe just an outfit or two,” Kon says, blushing furiously in the direction of the mall fountain. Tim considers pressing his luck with jewelry, but figures he can sneak accessories in later. Like, subtly. Or just incredibly blatantly and shamelessly, which is probably likelier to work on Kon anyway. And shoes, while he's at it. 

“You did promise me a fashion show,” Tim reminds him. Kon manages to blush darker, but also grins. 

“Guess I did,” he says, then wags his eyebrows at him. “Think they'll let us in the changing rooms together?” 

Tim's brain instantly self-liquidates and leaks out his ears and ruins his shirt, or at least it really feels like it does. 

“I think you can always sneak me in if we have to,” he says with a smirk, using every single drop of his Bat-training to look and sound like a normal person making a lighthearted joke and not a desperately horny five-alarm fire who is suddenly thinking thoughts. 

Kon laughs, so apparently it works, thank god. 

Tim takes advantage of the granted permission to get Kon to the closest department store and clothes-hunting, which to be honest he's not particularly sure how to do correctly because he mostly shops while thinking things like “how do I make myself look like a normal teenage civilian from Bristol?” and less things like “what would my very attractive teammate who doesn't know how to be a normal teenage civilian from anywhere most like to wear?” He mostly just nods encouragingly while Kon looks at things and helps him pick the right sizes. 

Also he tries not to be reduced to a desperately horny five-alarm fire every time Kon asks his opinion about a shirt or whatever and then listens to it. 

He has no idea why he's so into the idea of Kon wearing clothes he suggested or picked out, but Jesus, he just really is. Note to self: never let himself pick out Kon's clothes if the team has to go undercover or incognito or anything like that. Outsource that one to Cissie or maybe Cassie, just for the sake of his focus. 

. . . actually, maybe not Cassie. Cassie might have similar issues to his current ones, if they let her dress Kon. 

. . . . . . then again, if he lets Cassie dress Kon, then he has plausible deniability if Kon ends up in–never mind. 

He probably needs to just stop thinking about this, he decides. Though that’d be easier if Kon stopped asking his opinion, probably. Like–just a little. 

“What about this?” Kon asks thoughtfully, looking at a mannequin wearing a fitted bright red tank top that’s half mesh and a pair of black leather pants so tight that they could pass for leggings. There are belts. And buckles. And . . . straps. 

Tim is pretty sure he’s not going to manage to stop thinking about this. 

“If you try that on in front of me, we’re getting banned from this store,” he says frankly, telling himself he’s joking. Kon laughs, so that helps. 

Tim is definitely not joking, though. 

“Maybe the fire engine red is too obvious,” Kon says, giving him a sly grin and walking past the display. “Gotta stay classy, right? Go a little subtle.” 

Tim’s traitor of a brain pictures various takes on Kon dressing up “classy” and he suffers for it. Goddammit. 

“We should get you something dressy too, actually,” he says, and Kon looks briefly puzzled. 

“What for?” he asks. 

“Well, what if I want to take you somewhere with a dress code?” Tim says with a shrug. Kon probably wouldn’t be into, like, live theater or any kind of formal concert or art gallery event or anything like that, but a nicer restaurant or something, at least. 

“I don’t think places with dress codes want me there,” Kon says with another laugh, shaking his head. 

“I don’t care,” Tim says. “I want you there.” 

Kon lets out another abrupt laugh, then flees between two of the taller racks as his face reddens again. Tim hopes that’s because he’s flustered, not because he thinks he’s being weird. 

He really needs to work on his flirting. He’s kind of just fumbling around mostly-blind here and hoping he hits on something Kon’s into. It’s not like Tim Drake is actually Kon’s type, but if Kon’s just testing the waters with a guy for once, well, he probably wouldn’t care about that anyway. Tim’s still not sure if this is just him experimenting or not. Kon hasn’t said anything about not mentioning all this to anyone, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he wants anyone knowing either. 

Kon had looked a little weird when Tim had made that crack about explaining him to his dad earlier, come to think. Being nervous about being mentioned or ID’ed would explain that reaction. 

Tim peers into the racks after Kon and finds him with a messy pile of clothes in his arms, doing a very committed job of pretending to be very invested in a table covered in T-shirts with either superhero emblems or cheesy puns on them. Tim has to repress a snort of laughter, but the idea of Kon wearing a “talk nerdy to me” shirt is objectively hilarious. He's pretty sure Kon would sooner eat kryptonite than listen to nerd talk. 

“Find anything good?” he asks. Kon grins sheepishly at him. 

“Maybe,” he says. “Wanna hit the changing rooms?” 

Tim desperately does but also probably should not. However, he also probably shouldn't be a teenage vigilante who lies to his dad about what he does all night and fights random Gotham rogues with an extendable bo staff and obsessive detective work and very little else. 

“Sure, yeah,” he says because of the part of him that stalked Batman and counted flips and broke into a memorial for a Robin costume, and then he follows Kon to said changing rooms. Kon beelines right for them, which seems weird because it's not like he's been to this mall before and they definitely didn't pass them, so–“How did you know where they were?” 

Kon grins slyly at him, adjusting the pile of clothes in his arms. 

“‘Versatile’, remember?” he says. Tim's confused for a second, then realizes–

“Did you check the store layout with TTK?” he asks in bewilderment. 

“You kidding?” Kon asks with a laugh. “More like the mall layout.” 

“Like . . . right now?” Tim asks, still more bewildered. Kon looks smug. 

“They just made a new batch of pretzels back at that pretzel stand,” he says. 

. . . Tim needs a moment. Or a lifetime. 

“You can just . . . do that?” he asks. “Feel whatever’s going on in your range?” 

“Yeah,” Kon says. “Honestly, it's kinda distracting sometimes. Makes it hard to focus, you know? So I try to tune it out when I can, but sometimes it comes in handy on the job when there's, like, a hidden door or something. Though it's easier when I'm just walking around like this, ironically.” 

Tim has absolutely no way to explain how useful “can make an accurate map of an entire mall and possibly then some just by standing in it” actually is as a skill, to say nothing of spotting secret doors or hidden safes or concealed assassins or anything like that. If he'd known Kon could do that sooner, he'd have been starting every single mission in an unknown environment by making Kon do that. 

Crap, now he has to trick Kon into telling Robin he can do that as soon as possible. Tim has no idea how Kon didn't lead with that trick, though. That is like–that is just–he thinks maybe TTK is just broken. Like, as a power. He thinks Cadmus gave Kon a literal cheat code for life, in fact. If this were a video game, Kon would need to be immediately nerfed or no one would ever play any other character. 

Tim despairs for his capacity to ever be normal about this bastard and follows him into one of the bigger changing rooms, resigned to his fate. Kon has no apparent concern for the five-item limit and there isn’t an attendant around to stop them, so he just takes the whole pile of clothes in and dumps it on one half of the bench. Tim’s not sure if he’s leaving the other half free for discards or for him, so–

“Sit back and enjoy the show, man,” Kon says as he flashes him a bright grin before peeling off his sweater, which answers that question pretty quick. Also, nearly evaporates Tim’s sanity. Kon’s literally still wearing his damn suit underneath and it nearly evaporates his sanity; what even is that? 

He is in so, so much trouble here, isn’t he.

[suzukiblu]

First chapter of the obligatory sugar daddy Tim/sugar baby Kon AU I just spent all of November working on is now properly edited and live on AO3, kids, and will now be updating there!

call me cute and feed me sugar

Tim Drake had absolutely no intentions of ever becoming anyone's sugar daddy when he met Superboy. This would have worked out better for him if Superboy had ever had an actual legal identity or an actual legal guardian or just . . . literally anything whatsoever in life. Ever. At all. Just a bank account, even.

[suzukiblu]

Day nine of fic NaNoWriMo; obligatory sugar daddy Tim/sugar baby Kon.

Tim's nucleus of an idea requires some careful math, some even more careful bank fraud, and a lot of planning. Less planning than the supervillain timeline, at least, but still a lot of planning. He has to time it very carefully to make Kon won't have forgotten about the museum heist and the idiot civilian he saved from it, but so there won't be anything suspicious about said idiot civilian having managed to track him down. Admittedly, Kon isn't very hard to track down, but normal high schoolers aren't very good at tracking people down.

Well, not unless they're stalking a celebrity they have a crush on or doxxing a YouTuber who's mildly annoyed them or something.

. . . okay, Tim's probably being too paranoid here. If Kon asks how he found him, all he has to say is he follows him on Twitter or something.

He does actually follow Kon with one of his undercover IDs, because Caroline Hill needed a few social media accounts to round out her existence and giving her ones that she just focused on following celebrities with saved him from having to rig up a bunch of bots and other accounts to be her "friends". It's way easier to just keep up lurker accounts for her and occasionally like a few interesting photos and generally inoffensive comments about current events.

He didn't even deliberately go find Kon's account; Twitter recommended it to him after he followed the Titans and he decided if Bruce asked he could just sell it as a way to keep tabs on a new ally and teammate in a way they wouldn't notice. Caroline Hill also follows Arrowette's official account, even though Tim knows Cissie's mom is the one who actually runs it, plus the Titans' and a couple of other more public-facing heroes'.

So as long as Bruce doesn't notice just how many thirst-trap selfies Kon has posted in wet swimsuits or post-fight ripped-up costumes or with that stupid flirty smirk on, Tim might actually be able to get away with that excuse.

Heteronormativity might protect him, if nothing else.

Maybe.

Look, there's a reason it's Caroline and not Alvin following Kon's account.

Tim works on his idea and his plan and the bank fraud that'll let him crack into his trust fund early without his dad noticing, because while his allowance is frankly appalling and he has a lot more in savings than anyone under the age of twenty probably should, it's not actually enough to fund an entire new life for his stupid sexy teammate, and unfortunately Robin-duties kind of put a crimp in the idea of getting an after-school job, so bank fraud it is.

Just a little touch of supervillain practice, he figures.

Tim works out some reasonable timing and a few different possible approaches to take with Kon, and he tries to stay logical and patient about the whole process even though literally every day this takes is another day that Kon is stuck in a shitty lab that tried to mind-control him and is still actively taking advantage of him, under new management or not. Even Superman doesn't trust Cadmus–understandably–but apparently having an inside man in with them is more important to him than protecting Kon from them? Somehow?

Which is much, much less understandable, to Tim. It's not like Kon volunteered for that. Superman only came to him about it after he took the job for lack of other options. And also he asked him to do it while offering him a real name tied to his family, and while Kon doesn't even know his real name exists.

So yeah, Tim really needs to get a personal kryptonite supply going. Just so much of a personal kryptonite supply. A full rainbow of one, just in case. Like, carefully lead-sealed and code-labeled so Kon will know to avoid it just in case he stumbles across it, but still.

Fuck, Superman better be being mind-controlled right now or something. Or impersonated. Or just somehow compromised.

If he's not, there is not enough Kryptonite in the world for Tim's needs.

So Tim works out his plan, and then he goes back to Metropolis. Specifically, he goes back to Metropolis after Kon updates his Twitter with a selfie that has the Metropolis skyline in the background and a caption about a local café he's about to hit up, which hopefully will give Tim an hour or so to get there before Kon swans off to some random beach or goes back underground with Cadmus or whatever, and also hopefully won't be swarmed with fans or supervillains when he does.

Actually walking up to Cadmus's front door and asking Superboy to come out and play is not in any way in the plan, though if it takes long enough to "find" Kon somewhere plausibly deniably findable for a high school student to manage, Tim's open to the possibility. Fuck knows he's done stupider and weirder and still made it work.

Tim gets to Metropolis in forty-five minutes because of judicious abuse of the Batplane and Bruce being busy on the Watchtower for the day. He'll be telling him he went to see Superboy, since obviously Bruce isn't going to miss the missing jet fuel and Alfred has no reason to keep his mouth shut about it either, but be lying about why he went to see him. As far as Bruce knows, this is business.

Technically, Tim could spin this as business if he had to.

He gets to the café and there aren't any supervillains but there is a small handful of preteen girls on the sidewalk outside giggling over their collection of newly-gained autographs, which means the local supervillains are either behind the times and not properly tuned into social media or just don't have beef with specifically Superboy. Which . . . quite possibly they don't, Tim is realizing. The locals would know how little investment Superman has in Kon, after all, and Kon spends more time either underground with Cadmus or running around with Young Justice than he does actually in the city proper, so it's not like he's had time to collect many personal grudges. Those are probably all back in Hawaii. In Metropolis, he's mostly just been reported as covering petty crimes that'd slipped through the cracks while Superman was busy handling Brainiac or Parasite or having another cold war with Lex Luthor.

It's Kon, of course, so eventually he'll piss off Toyman or accidentally trip over Mxyzptlk or something, but right now, Metropolis mostly just remembers him as that slightly too eager kid who stopped a bomb from killing them all that one time and helped Superman stop Engine City from happening to them. Kind of like Superman has a very enthusiastic but well-intentioned super-powered fanboy kicking around downtown, as opposed to an actual sidekick or any kind of partner that he regularly works with and supports. Steel gets a lot more Metropolis street cred and appreciation, for obvious reasons, but Kon just hasn't been around the city that often since his initial debut. He's a little bit like a tertiary mascot character.

Tim thinks Metropolis is full of idiots, but their standards for vigilantism were set by a man who can bench-press a planet, so he supposes it makes sense that they see a teen idol telekinetic as a charming little side character and not really anyone too impressive in his own right.

No wonder Kon ran off to Hawaii the first chance he got after Superman came back to life, though.

Though in retrospect, why did Superman let him?

Tim walks into the café in civilian clothes and immediately spots Kon at a table in the back and gets a very sharply assessing eye from the woman behind the counter. He doesn't patronize her by pretending to be here to order anything and just heads straight for Kon.

She watches him, and so do a couple of assorted patrons that might be regulars. Tim wonders if Kon's a regular himself, or if Metropolis is just more protective of its Supers than he'd previously realized. Kon isn't here often enough for him to have really looked too closely into it.

Kon doesn't look up from his phone or his mostly-empty plate and mug; it looks like he's playing a cell phone game or something similar. Tim debates the best way to introduce himself, since he doubts Kon will immediately recognize him, but before he can–

"This better be worth ditching out on the refill I just ordered," Kon says distractedly without even glancing up.

"Sorry?" Tim says, a little bemused, and then Kon does look up and startles a little, looking surprised.

"Shit, sorry, thought you were somebody else," he says. "Blame the coat."

"You weren't looking at my coat," Tim says, looking down at it himself in vague mystification anyway. It's just a coat. It's long and dark and on the heavy side, but that's literally the only notable things about it.

"I don't think you understand how TTK works," Kon says, lowering his phone with a wry smirk. "I don't have to look at you to see you, man."

. . . well, that's definitely an application of tactile telekinesis that Tim wasn't previously aware of.

He's just going to try not to think too hard about any implications of Kon's telekinetic field potentially being in constant passive contact with literally everything and everyone around. Especially not him.

If he's lucky, he'll be able to forget that new bit of knowledge as anything but an unfortunate new angle to his occasional sex dreams and just leave it at that.

"Oh," Tim says, feeling vaguely faint and still trying very hard not to think too hard about this new bit of knowledge. "Uh, that's . . . cool. Um. Can I talk to you? Er–please?"

"Need another museum un-robbed?" Kon asks, and Tim is genuinely surprised to be so immediately recognized. It's been over a week, Kon saves people's lives every day, and they'd barely even spoken.

"Not so much," he says. "I just wanted to thank you again. Um. Properly, I mean."

Kon tilts his head, a brief flicker of curiosity flashing through his eyes, then grins up at him.

"I told you, man, it's no big," he says. "It's just what I do, you know?"

"I know, yeah," Tim says. "But I still appreciate it. Can I cover your lunch for you?"

He figures that's a subtle little nudge towards what he wants out of this conversation. Get a foot in the door and all; set some expectations. Or at least try to work up to it.

"I don't know, can you?" Kon says with another brief flash of curiosity, though his grin doesn't change.

"I mean, you're a superhero so I assume you could stop me if you wanted, but otherwise I'm not really seeing any obstacles there," Tim replies reasonably. Kon laughs a lot more brightly than Tim usually gets to see him laugh, which is incredibly distracting, but the people glaring bloody murder at his back finally start letting up.

"I dunno, you're pretty cool under pressure," Kon says with a sly smirk. "Maybe I couldn't."

Tim hates his useless brain and all the totally inappropriate thoughts it immediately conjures up about various options for getting one over on Kon, because of course all of said options are sexy options. Kon's smirking at him all sly and teasing and Tim just made him laugh; there is literally no possible way they could not be.

God, he's going to be thinking about this for their entire next training session, isn't he. That's gonna be mortifying as fuck.

"I think you're underestimating yourself," he says. "You handled those assholes at the museum like they were nothing."

"Well, they weren't exactly Intergang," Kon says wryly.

"Still," Tim says. "The only casualty of an armed robbery and hostage situation was a vase."

"Apparently a very important vase, according to the papers," Kon says, making a face. "Superman told me I need to be more careful next time."

"Over a vase?" Tim says incredulously. He doesn't care how important the stupid vase was, Kon was busy protecting his skull from bullets. The vase's untimely demise is mildly unfortunate at best.

"Well, he wouldn't have broken it," Kon says with a shrug, picking up his mug to knock back the last of his drink. It looks like hot chocolate, not coffee.

"Neither did you," Tim points out. "You're not the one who freaked out and dropped their gun."

"Tell that to Superman," Kon snorts, briefly eyeing his empty mug before setting it back down. Then he shrugs again and grins again too, leaning forward a bit towards Tim. "It's whatever, man, no big deal. Wanna sit?"

Tim isn't actually sure what to do with that offer, but it would be helpful for making his pitch, so . . .

Though he doesn't know why Kon's making it, to be honest.

Still, no time to be looking the gift horse in the mouth, so Tim takes him up on it and sits down across from him. Kon looks weirdly pleased about it, for some reason. Tim still doesn't know why, but isn't gonna question it.

"Thanks," he tries.

"Pleasure's all mine," Kon says, flashing him a grin as he rests his chin in a hand. Tim remains mystified as to why he seems so pleased and why he even remembers him at all, but . . . okay, sure. This might as well happen. "What's your name, anyway?"

"Tim Drake," Tim says, feeling increasingly mystified.

"Nice to meet you, Tim," Kon says. "You know, without any weird magic goats or guns to anyone's head being involved."

Honestly, the magic goat and the gun to his head were both less weird in Tim's personal frame of reference than Kon's apparent interest in chatting him up in this trendy Metropolis café is, but whatever. It's useful, so he's gonna make full use of it.

[suzukiblu]

WIP excerpt for Mango Bat; obligatory sugar baby Kon.

Tim, unintentionally, ends up in the Justice Cave Thursday night. Well–Robin does, anyway. There's some hard files Bruce needs that he left here last weekend, because Bruce never tells anyone he needs anything until he is literally physically incapable of avoiding it and so he didn't know not to leave them here. 

Tim didn't get into being an emotional support sidekick expecting much aside from a less-vengeful Batman out of it, obviously, but it'd still be nice to occasionally get communicated with. Like, just for the novelty factor, if nothing else. 

He collects the files, and while he's double-checking that he's got them all, a cloud of beige smoke spills into the room and materializes into Suzie before he can grab his rebreather. Tim knows, factually, that Suzie is gaseous and therefore not always in an obviously human shape, but after growing up in Gotham, land of fear gas and Joker gas, there's some instincts that are a little hard to shake. 

“Robin!” she says delightedly while he's calming his heart rate, flying over to him with a surprisingly excited expression. He feels a brief flash of guilt remembering that she's probably been alone most of the week. Really, Suzie isn't in an ideal living situation either, but she also doesn't have any physical needs and can't pass for a normal human and is being actively hunted by a dubiously moral government organization, so . . . 

Fuck, Tim thinks. 

. . . maybe he can move Suzie into Kon's future cul-de-sac later, if he gets him one in a quiet enough area. Or maybe it'll be time to burn down the world as a supervillain before that and she can just live wherever she likes. Just–she's on his to-do list now, either way. And now that he’s thinking about it, maybe Cissie would be better off with a place to live that wasn’t either a boarding school or her mother, and–

Maybe he can just buy a whole neighborhood and move everyone he knows into it. Maybe that's an option. 

He'll start some soft plans and go from there, Tim figures. Once he’s got things settled with Kon, at least, since he’s the one currently in the shitty cloning lab. At least Suzie’s not in a lab anymore. 

God, why is this a concern in their lives, whether or not any of them are in labs or not? Also why was he not more concerned by this sooner, all things considered? 

Or, like, why don’t any of the adults in Kon’s damn life care about him in any way that is even remotely visible from an outsider perspective. Or that. 

Tim’s pretty sure any relevant “caring” wouldn’t even be visible from Kon’s perspective, given the way he talks and how sure he was that Robin wouldn’t think there was anything weird or wrong or straight-up ethically appalling about him professionally risking his life for a shitty cloning lab for room and board and literally nothing else.

[suzukiblu]

Day five of fic NaNoWriMo; obligatory sugar daddy Tim/sugar baby Kon AU.

The Superboy problem is a problem, but it's a backburner problem. There isn't really much Tim can do about it, after all. Bruce isn't gonna accept "hey so I know secret identities and maintaining the Bat-mystique and everything but could you just like . . . take in an extremely high-profile teenage superhero with no vested interest in maintaining any kind of secret identity of his own, maybe?" as a plan. Tim needs something better. Something more functional. And also something Kon will actually go for.

And there's just no way that Tim can just walk up to a notoriously independent and proud and defensive teammate who barely considers him an acquaintance and say "do you want an apartment and monthly living expenses and maybe also an allowance, no strings attached?"

That would be weird, definitely.

Like. Very definitely.

Tim's still tempted to try it, mind. It's not like he couldn't afford it, with a little bit of abuse of his trust fund and a lot of lying to his dad. And really, would that even be an abuse? If helping his teammate live his fucking life outside of a fucking lab counts as an abuse . . .

Well, maybe he really will move up his supervillain timeline, that's all.

But it's a backburner problem, still, and Tim isn't actually thinking about it at all when his best chance to solve it pops up. What Tim is doing is suffering through a field trip to a Metropolis art museum, because the school board is full of cowards and thinks sending his grade to an outside-Gotham museum will decrease the chances of said field trip being interrupted by a museum robbery.

Obviously it will, but come on, they're from Gotham. Like they can't handle a museum robbery.

Also all the art here is pretentious. Like, in obnoxious Metropolis-type ways.

If Tim has to look at one more stylized interpretation of the sun reflecting on a skyscraper while a "subtle" caped figure flies by in the background, he will actually choke. Like literally, actually choke.

Get one original thought. Please. Someone. Anyone.

(No, the stylized interpretations of the moon reflecting on a Gothic building while a subtle caped figure looms among the gargoyles are not equally uncreative, thank you very much. At least duplicating Gotham architecture involves some actual artistry beyond "paint a few straight lines and add a lens flare".)

Tim takes some half-assed notes about the boringly generic exhibit they're here to see and then goes looking for literally anything more interesting than said exhibit. There's got to be some photography somewhere in this place, right? Or at least some loaner art that somebody outside of Metropolis put together before Superman's public debut. Or something.

He ends up in the ancient Mesopotamian exhibit mostly by trying to avoid people and, unfortunately, immediately runs straight into a magical artifact. He doesn't actually know it's magic at the time, but the assholes who are about to blow in an outside wall in pursuit of it sure do.

Tim, unfortunately oblivious to phenomenal cosmic power in clay form, thinks it looks kind of like a cute little toy goat and is just grateful it isn't another skyscraper.

Then the wall gets blown in.

"The school board deserves this," Tim mutters, closing his notebook and sticking it back in his bag because sure, why not. This might as well happen.

Ugh.

The very obvious thieves rush in through the gap in the wall. A few people scream–Tim assumes to be polite, since this is already the most unimpressive museum robbery he's seen in months–and the civilians scatter as the guards rush forward. Tim wonders why anyone's even bothering, given that this is Metropolis. What, are they worried the thieves aren't gonna validate their parking for them?

Seriously, Tim knows all the robbery statistics in this city. Even when Superman doesn't show up, the injury and fatality rates are shockingly low. It's statistically more dangerous to go for a walk in Gotham Park mid-afternoon than it is to be present for an armed robbery in Metropolis.

Which is funny, considering the people doing armed robberies in Metropolis come armed for Superman.

Look, Tim doesn't understand the statistics, he just records them.

The thieves tie up the guards first, which seems like a waste of time to Tim when time is of the essence but probably will be for the best if they get pinned down in the gallery, he supposes. Then again, that'd likely end up in a hostage situation anyway, so why worry about containing a couple of unarmed guards over saving thirty seconds when you're doing a smash and grab?

Seems inefficient to him, considering.

He keeps assessing the situation and taking mental notes as he ushers various classmates and museum-goers towards comparative safety, since a successful supervillain timeline requires appropriate research and development. And also, Metropolis-based criminals should know how to work around Superman, at least in theory, so it's best to keep an eye on what does and doesn't work for them.

Not for any specific reason, obviously.

Definitely not.

One of the thieves goes for the little clay goat, smashing its glass display case with their armored elbow, and only then do the museum alarms start screaming. Seems like a stupid design choice when an exploding wall doesn't set them off, but whatever, at least there are alarms.

Honestly, if it were him, Tim would have a silent alarm and a secondary alarm set to a specifically Superman-discernable frequency, though he's sure Superman would get sick of that quick in non-life-threatening situations, so maybe there are local regulations about that or something, who knows. He should look into that, actually. Or just play something annoying on a frequency normal human hearing can’t discern and see what happens, if nothing else.

They make sonic fences to keep dogs in and teenagers out, don't they? Same theory.

The thieves are all yelling orders to each other and arguing; no clear chain of command and a poorly-established plan, Tim notes. Most of the civilians are clear or behind cover, so if he just–

Right, Tim remembers belatedly as one of the thieves makes a grab for him. He's currently wearing civilian wear, isn't he.

That probably means he needs to let this incredibly clumsy grab work, doesn't it, he reflects resignedly. Definitely it does, actually.

Ugh.

Tim, dubiously, lets the thief grab him and debates how upset he's supposed to look about this situation. A Gothamite can't look too freaked out over a Metropolis criminal, obviously; he'd never live it down at school. Seriously, is this guy even armed, he–

Ah, never mind. Definitely armed.

And an idiot with no concept of trigger safety, judging by the way he's holding the gun he's currently jamming into Tim's temple.

Great. Just great.

What does this moron even think he's doing, anyway? The guards are all tied up, as far as he knows there's no superheroes on scene, and nobody's actually trying to stop them. If he accidentally murders a civilian right now, they're all going to be in way, way worse trouble than just stealing a little clay goat would entail.

Tim resists the urge to point that out since there is, again, a gun to his head right now and the person holding it there is in fact a moron with no concept of trigger safety. Not an ideal time to start a conversation, especially not to criticize said moron.

It's tempting, just again, not ideal.

"The fuck are you doing?!" one of the thieves yells to the one going to a really unnecessary amount of effort to drag Tim along. "You were supposed to grab a little kid for the hostage!"

"There's no little kids, Mark!" the thief holding Tim protests petulantly. "I'm doing my best here, man!"

"No names, asshole!" the apparent "Mark" yells back at him.

Tim is pretty sure these thieves are just not very good at crime in general. Or possibly just not very good at anything at all.

He starts calculating the best place to "trip" out of this guy's arms and "accidentally" elbow him in the dick–off-camera, obviously, he doesn't want to leave any footage for anyone to review later–and pretends to be a good little hostage in the meantime, if not a particularly cowed one. Again: Gothamite. He can't actually let it look like a Metropolis criminal did anything worse than mildly annoy him.

Okay, maybe like, Lex Luthor or Brainiac could get a Gothamite past "mildly annoyed", but not a half-assed handful of petty thieves with a shitty plan and an even shittier exit strategy. They would've been better off running in, grabbing what they wanted, and then just scattering; even Superman can't be everywhere at once, especially if the thieves all blended into the crowd or had a couple of getaway cars waiting or something similar. Multiple targets, it'd be easy for him to miss the right one until it was too late.

That would require actual skill and planning and genuine forethought, though, which are very clearly not things this crew has bothered with either developing in themselves or outsourcing to someone competent.

Tim is going to be so fucking embarrassed if he dies to a low-level Metropolis criminal's craptastic trigger discipline. At least the Joker got Jason. There was a plan and actual malicious intent there, and also intentional targeting of specifically him. Tim has apparently just been tagged as "person who looks easiest to hold hostage", which he guesses he could take as a good sign for his acting abilities but honestly is more likely just this guy being a fucking dumbass with less brains than a mummified limpet.

God, imagine what his classmates would put in the yearbook if he died on a Metropolis field trip, too. Actually, no, never mind, he doesn't even want to think about it. Too fucking mortifying a possibility.

The thief drags Tim closer to suitable "tripping" territory, Tim debates how hard he can elbow him and still claim it was accidental, and somebody says, "Are you fucking serious, man?"

Somebody, specifically, is Kon. He's standing in the middle of the hole in the wall in the full leather jacket and S-shield combo, hands on his hips and expression exasperated. Tim has a weird, irrational moment of thinking he actually recognizes him and wants to know how he fucked up this bad, but Kon's eyeing the thieves, not him.

"You know I'm gonna get blamed for this, right," Kon says, gesturing meaningfully at the smashed-in wall. "I always get blamed for the property damage."

"Back off or I'll shoot!" the thief holding Tim yells, jamming the barrel of his gun annoyingly hard into his temple.

"Does 'faster than a speeding bullet' mean nothing to you people?" Kon asks, tilting his head just enough to make it obvious that he's rolling his eyes exaggeratedly.

"Superman is faster than a speeding bullet," another thief snaps. "Not you, you shitty little poser."

"I mean, you could try testing me and then get attempted murder on your crime bingo cards for absolutely zero reason," Kon suggests conversationally, smirking in amusement. "Security cameras still running in here?"

Tim guesses he's saved, technically, but this definitely means he can never tell Young Justice his secret identity, because if Kon recognizes him he will never, ever let him live this down.

Also, everybody at school is going to give him so much shit for getting saved by a Super.