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Fic: Next Best Thing (happy birthday, Tim)
Title: Next Best Thing
Characters: Tim, Kon, Dick, others
Rating: PG
Summary: Tim's friends throw him a birthday party.
Notes: It's a few days late, but...I wasn't going to write this until![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
batstalker reminded me Tim's birthday was earlier this week. I started this then, and then sat on it a few days. Art by batstalker, intended as a bribe to make me finish XD.
Words: 1700
The party had been Dick’s idea, but Kon had helped. As soon as Dick had mentioned the possibility of a party for Tim, Kon had actually been all over the idea. He hasn’t liked how down on himself Tim has been lately, and even though things seem to be looking up in the last few weeks, since Tim tangled with Ra’s al Ghul and came out on top (if slightly battered), Kon still thinks the boy needs as much pleasant nonsense in his life as his friends could manage.
So, he’d done the best he could to round everyone up, even the people Tim apparently hadn’t kept up contact with. It was easier once Bart was in on it, eagerly zipping back and forth across the country with invitations (handmade, with little bats on them), and all but shoving Dick and Kon out of the way to take over decorating.
Alfred had done most of the food, and Martha had loaded Kon and Bart down with all kinds of goodies. The new Blue Beetle had arranged somehow for Guy Gardener to tend the bar. Dick had set them all up in a huge lounge-like room in one of the big skyscraper hotels in downtown Gotham, probably something he or Tim *own*, the rich bastards.
And Tim seems to actually be enjoying himself, miracle of miracles. He’d spent ages catching up with Cissie and Anita and Greta, getting smacked around playfully for not returning calls. A lot of the older Titans are there, too - Kory, Vic, and Gar, of course, and Donna, some of the Outsiders - there are a few people Kon doesn’t know, but not that many.
Batgirl is there. Spoiler. Robin. Whatever her name is. She and Tim aren’t really talking much, though she did come over and wish him a happy birthday. There’s a pretty, dark-skinned girl that Kon remembers from the house in Gotham. She’d sort of clung to Tim at first. Kon had thought that maybe she was a new girlfriend, but once she’d warmed up to the aliens and cyborgs, she’d ended up playing foozeball with Cassie and the new Beetle and hadn’t even come back over to the corner sofa Tim had staked out for his party-lurking.
“So, no girlfriends?” Kon asks, leaning across the table to pop the bottle top off of Tim’s Zesti Classic with the brush of a finger. Unlike most of the people at the party, Tim is teetotalling, sticking to soda.
“I’ve been kind of busy,” Tim says offhandedly. He’s looking past Kon, watching something happening over by the bar.
“What, like, the whole time I was gone? I mean, I know about you and Cassie...”
“There was a girl at school.” Tim takes a long drink from his soda, and Kon plants his elbows on the table, watching his face carefully, waiting for the story. “It didn’t work out. I don’t think I’m going to try and hook up with a civilian again.”
Kon blinks. That’s it? That’s all he gets? “So?”
“So?” Tim repeats, finally looking at him.
“So, was she hot? Did she dump you? You dump her? She turn out to be a supervillain? Did you,” Kon pauses to take a sip of his beer and wiggle his eyebrows, “finally?”
“Kon,” Tim protests, blushing weakly and glancing around, but Kon doesn’t think anyone can hear them over the music.
“Did you?” Kon asks, lowering his voice a little anyway, because Tim’s not going to answer either way if he thinks people are looking at them.
Tim looks away, over Kon’s shoulder. “No!” he hisses.
“And the hottie you came in with? What’s her name?”
“I -” Tim pauses, his eyes snapping back to Kon’s face. “What? Wait, Tam? No. We’re pretending - She told this reporter we were secretly engaged, to try and throw her off the bat trail. I don’t think it worked though. We’re going to stage a messy break-up next week. Steph has graciously agreed to slap me on national television. You’ll probably want to watch.”
“Hell yeah,” Kon says, snickering.. He stops laughing when Tim’s eyes slide off his face again, over his shoulder. Kon turns in his chair, thinking from the slightly glassy look in Tim’s eyes that maybe Grace and Anissa are making out again. He’s a little surprised when the most interesting thing in Tim’s general line of sight is...well, his brother.
Dick is hamming it up for a couple of the girls, balancing on one hand, though he’s uncharacteristically wobbly. He keeps having to put his other hand down or touch the chair beside him to keep his balance. He lets his legs drop into a split, and then, bracing one hand on the seat of the chair, he levers himself up until he’s standing on one hand on the *chair*, the muscles in his bare arm cording and flexing.
When Kon turns back around, Tim looks... Well. Kon’s never actually seen that look on Tim’s face before. “Oh my god,” he says, and Tim’s eyes snap to his face, narrow in confusion at first and then widening slowly. “You’re hot for Nightwing.”
Tim makes a frantic, furious shushing sound, fluttering his hand and making an aborted movement, as if he was going to leap across the table and slap his hands over Kon’s mouth.”Shut up!” he hisses, looking around half-panicked.
“I mean, he’s hot and all, but-”
“Conner!” Tim hisses, and the look in his eyes makes Kon stop talking at once. “You’re not the only one at this party with enhanced hearing, okay? Please, please, just-”
“Yeah,” Kon says, suddenly contrite. “Okay.” he lowers his voice and leans across the table, as close as he can get without being *too* obvious. “So.”
Tim rolls his eyes and looks away. “So what?”
“*So*, have you ever made a move?” Tim’s cheek twitches, and Kon sits back a little. “No, of course not. That was a stupid question.”
“It’s not like that.” Tim mumbles. He’s starting to blush, and he still won’t meet Kon’s eyes, focusing instead on the corner where Bart appears to be trying to chat up Bombshell and Natasha Irons at the same time.
“No, man, I know that look. You’ve got it bad. I can’t believe you never told me you were into *dudes*, dude!”
“Shh,” Tim hisses, and then finally looks at him. “You can’t tell anyone.”
Kon blinks. “*Why?* Seriously, man. If anyone’s going to freak out about it, then fuck ‘em.”
“Not that,” Tim says, quietly. “Though I would appreciate some discretion about my personal life. It’s...I don’t want Dick to know.”
“You think he’d care?” Kon glances over to where Dick is now perched with one hand on the edge of the chair and the other on the back of it, balancing it on two legs. Kara has one hand on his ankle, keeping him balanced, which probably means he’s pretty drunk. “I’m pretty sure the man enjoys being perved on.”
“Not by me.” Tim says. “Look, as long as he doesn’t know, we can go on being...” he trails off. “Things are good. He’s...” he stops and sighs. “He thinks I outgrew my ‘hero worship’. I haven’t told him otherwise, and I don’t plan to.”
“So you’re never going to try for it?” Kon asks, feeling frustrated. It’s just like Tim - when they’re working, he won’t accept the possibility of failure. His personal life seems to be pretty much the opposite, though. “He likes you, he’s hot, he’s nice - right now he’s *drunk*. If you hit on him now, you could play it off tomorrow as a joke, if he even remembers. And if he takes you up on it...” he gives Tim a significant look.
“It’s not going to happen,” Tim says, and then sighs. “Look, people don’t always get exactly what they want. You learn to live with it. Take the next best thing.”
“That’s *bullshit*,” Kon hisses back. “Tim, you’ve got to take risks. Go out on a limb, sometimes.”
Tim looks at him seriously for a long moment, and then glances down as he fidgets with his soda bottle. “Not when what I’d be risking is so important.”
They both jerk with surprise when they hear the crash, even though, really, it was probably inevitable. When Kon looks, Dick is being helped off the floor by Kara and Tam, and he’s laughing like a maniac, red-faced, hair wild. Tim is watching him with a small twist to his mouth.
“Hey!” Dick shouts when he realizes everyone is looking at him. “Why are you all looking at me? It’s my little brother’s *birthday!*" He reaches out and grabs a drink from someone, holding it high over his head as he turns toward Tim. “Happy birthday! To the best- the most- my little brother! The *best* brother. Ow, Donna, stop, you’re messing me up.”
Tim is grinning like a loon, his eyes sparkling, his cheeks flushed pink. It’s not the same kind of embarrassment he was suffering from before, though - he’s genuinely happy. Kon feels a little twist in his stomach. He doesn’t see Tim look like that nearly often enough.
“Okay!” Dick said, protesting something that was happening beyond the crowd. “To the smartest, sneakiest, most awesome guy! He always figures everything out. Everything! Outsmarts supervillains and figures out people aren’t dead. He’s awesome!” There’s a smattering of laughter, but a few people are nodding their heads, and when Dick raises his glass up again, sloshing something pink over the side, everyone in the room does the same. “Happy birthday!”
Kon salutes Tim with his bottle and taps it against Tim’s soda before tipping his beer back and draining it. “Happy birthday, man,” he says.
Tim sits back in his chair a little, smiling at everyone as they salute him and toast. Bart zips over and pumps his hand while wishing him a happy birthday, and then gives Kon a fresh beer and Tim a new Zesti before disappearing again after the girls.
When the hubbub dies down, Tim turns back to Kon, holding out his bottle for Kon to pop it open with a fingernail. “Sometimes,” he says, and pauses to take a sip, “the ‘next best thing’ is the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
art by Meg (batstalker)
Characters: Tim, Kon, Dick, others
Rating: PG
Summary: Tim's friends throw him a birthday party.
Notes: It's a few days late, but...I wasn't going to write this until
batstalker reminded me Tim's birthday was earlier this week. I started this then, and then sat on it a few days. Art by batstalker, intended as a bribe to make me finish XD.Words: 1700
The party had been Dick’s idea, but Kon had helped. As soon as Dick had mentioned the possibility of a party for Tim, Kon had actually been all over the idea. He hasn’t liked how down on himself Tim has been lately, and even though things seem to be looking up in the last few weeks, since Tim tangled with Ra’s al Ghul and came out on top (if slightly battered), Kon still thinks the boy needs as much pleasant nonsense in his life as his friends could manage.
So, he’d done the best he could to round everyone up, even the people Tim apparently hadn’t kept up contact with. It was easier once Bart was in on it, eagerly zipping back and forth across the country with invitations (handmade, with little bats on them), and all but shoving Dick and Kon out of the way to take over decorating.
Alfred had done most of the food, and Martha had loaded Kon and Bart down with all kinds of goodies. The new Blue Beetle had arranged somehow for Guy Gardener to tend the bar. Dick had set them all up in a huge lounge-like room in one of the big skyscraper hotels in downtown Gotham, probably something he or Tim *own*, the rich bastards.
And Tim seems to actually be enjoying himself, miracle of miracles. He’d spent ages catching up with Cissie and Anita and Greta, getting smacked around playfully for not returning calls. A lot of the older Titans are there, too - Kory, Vic, and Gar, of course, and Donna, some of the Outsiders - there are a few people Kon doesn’t know, but not that many.
Batgirl is there. Spoiler. Robin. Whatever her name is. She and Tim aren’t really talking much, though she did come over and wish him a happy birthday. There’s a pretty, dark-skinned girl that Kon remembers from the house in Gotham. She’d sort of clung to Tim at first. Kon had thought that maybe she was a new girlfriend, but once she’d warmed up to the aliens and cyborgs, she’d ended up playing foozeball with Cassie and the new Beetle and hadn’t even come back over to the corner sofa Tim had staked out for his party-lurking.
“So, no girlfriends?” Kon asks, leaning across the table to pop the bottle top off of Tim’s Zesti Classic with the brush of a finger. Unlike most of the people at the party, Tim is teetotalling, sticking to soda.
“I’ve been kind of busy,” Tim says offhandedly. He’s looking past Kon, watching something happening over by the bar.
“What, like, the whole time I was gone? I mean, I know about you and Cassie...”
“There was a girl at school.” Tim takes a long drink from his soda, and Kon plants his elbows on the table, watching his face carefully, waiting for the story. “It didn’t work out. I don’t think I’m going to try and hook up with a civilian again.”
Kon blinks. That’s it? That’s all he gets? “So?”
“So?” Tim repeats, finally looking at him.
“So, was she hot? Did she dump you? You dump her? She turn out to be a supervillain? Did you,” Kon pauses to take a sip of his beer and wiggle his eyebrows, “finally?”
“Kon,” Tim protests, blushing weakly and glancing around, but Kon doesn’t think anyone can hear them over the music.
“Did you?” Kon asks, lowering his voice a little anyway, because Tim’s not going to answer either way if he thinks people are looking at them.
Tim looks away, over Kon’s shoulder. “No!” he hisses.
“And the hottie you came in with? What’s her name?”
“I -” Tim pauses, his eyes snapping back to Kon’s face. “What? Wait, Tam? No. We’re pretending - She told this reporter we were secretly engaged, to try and throw her off the bat trail. I don’t think it worked though. We’re going to stage a messy break-up next week. Steph has graciously agreed to slap me on national television. You’ll probably want to watch.”
“Hell yeah,” Kon says, snickering.. He stops laughing when Tim’s eyes slide off his face again, over his shoulder. Kon turns in his chair, thinking from the slightly glassy look in Tim’s eyes that maybe Grace and Anissa are making out again. He’s a little surprised when the most interesting thing in Tim’s general line of sight is...well, his brother.
Dick is hamming it up for a couple of the girls, balancing on one hand, though he’s uncharacteristically wobbly. He keeps having to put his other hand down or touch the chair beside him to keep his balance. He lets his legs drop into a split, and then, bracing one hand on the seat of the chair, he levers himself up until he’s standing on one hand on the *chair*, the muscles in his bare arm cording and flexing.
When Kon turns back around, Tim looks... Well. Kon’s never actually seen that look on Tim’s face before. “Oh my god,” he says, and Tim’s eyes snap to his face, narrow in confusion at first and then widening slowly. “You’re hot for Nightwing.”
Tim makes a frantic, furious shushing sound, fluttering his hand and making an aborted movement, as if he was going to leap across the table and slap his hands over Kon’s mouth.”Shut up!” he hisses, looking around half-panicked.
“I mean, he’s hot and all, but-”
“Conner!” Tim hisses, and the look in his eyes makes Kon stop talking at once. “You’re not the only one at this party with enhanced hearing, okay? Please, please, just-”
“Yeah,” Kon says, suddenly contrite. “Okay.” he lowers his voice and leans across the table, as close as he can get without being *too* obvious. “So.”
Tim rolls his eyes and looks away. “So what?”
“*So*, have you ever made a move?” Tim’s cheek twitches, and Kon sits back a little. “No, of course not. That was a stupid question.”
“It’s not like that.” Tim mumbles. He’s starting to blush, and he still won’t meet Kon’s eyes, focusing instead on the corner where Bart appears to be trying to chat up Bombshell and Natasha Irons at the same time.
“No, man, I know that look. You’ve got it bad. I can’t believe you never told me you were into *dudes*, dude!”
“Shh,” Tim hisses, and then finally looks at him. “You can’t tell anyone.”
Kon blinks. “*Why?* Seriously, man. If anyone’s going to freak out about it, then fuck ‘em.”
“Not that,” Tim says, quietly. “Though I would appreciate some discretion about my personal life. It’s...I don’t want Dick to know.”
“You think he’d care?” Kon glances over to where Dick is now perched with one hand on the edge of the chair and the other on the back of it, balancing it on two legs. Kara has one hand on his ankle, keeping him balanced, which probably means he’s pretty drunk. “I’m pretty sure the man enjoys being perved on.”
“Not by me.” Tim says. “Look, as long as he doesn’t know, we can go on being...” he trails off. “Things are good. He’s...” he stops and sighs. “He thinks I outgrew my ‘hero worship’. I haven’t told him otherwise, and I don’t plan to.”
“So you’re never going to try for it?” Kon asks, feeling frustrated. It’s just like Tim - when they’re working, he won’t accept the possibility of failure. His personal life seems to be pretty much the opposite, though. “He likes you, he’s hot, he’s nice - right now he’s *drunk*. If you hit on him now, you could play it off tomorrow as a joke, if he even remembers. And if he takes you up on it...” he gives Tim a significant look.
“It’s not going to happen,” Tim says, and then sighs. “Look, people don’t always get exactly what they want. You learn to live with it. Take the next best thing.”
“That’s *bullshit*,” Kon hisses back. “Tim, you’ve got to take risks. Go out on a limb, sometimes.”
Tim looks at him seriously for a long moment, and then glances down as he fidgets with his soda bottle. “Not when what I’d be risking is so important.”
They both jerk with surprise when they hear the crash, even though, really, it was probably inevitable. When Kon looks, Dick is being helped off the floor by Kara and Tam, and he’s laughing like a maniac, red-faced, hair wild. Tim is watching him with a small twist to his mouth.
“Hey!” Dick shouts when he realizes everyone is looking at him. “Why are you all looking at me? It’s my little brother’s *birthday!*" He reaches out and grabs a drink from someone, holding it high over his head as he turns toward Tim. “Happy birthday! To the best- the most- my little brother! The *best* brother. Ow, Donna, stop, you’re messing me up.”
Tim is grinning like a loon, his eyes sparkling, his cheeks flushed pink. It’s not the same kind of embarrassment he was suffering from before, though - he’s genuinely happy. Kon feels a little twist in his stomach. He doesn’t see Tim look like that nearly often enough.
“Okay!” Dick said, protesting something that was happening beyond the crowd. “To the smartest, sneakiest, most awesome guy! He always figures everything out. Everything! Outsmarts supervillains and figures out people aren’t dead. He’s awesome!” There’s a smattering of laughter, but a few people are nodding their heads, and when Dick raises his glass up again, sloshing something pink over the side, everyone in the room does the same. “Happy birthday!”
Kon salutes Tim with his bottle and taps it against Tim’s soda before tipping his beer back and draining it. “Happy birthday, man,” he says.
Tim sits back in his chair a little, smiling at everyone as they salute him and toast. Bart zips over and pumps his hand while wishing him a happy birthday, and then gives Kon a fresh beer and Tim a new Zesti before disappearing again after the girls.
When the hubbub dies down, Tim turns back to Kon, holding out his bottle for Kon to pop it open with a fingernail. “Sometimes,” he says, and pauses to take a sip, “the ‘next best thing’ is the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
art by Meg (batstalker)
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Tim: Hey, Steph. I need a favor.
Steph: *sigh* what?
Tim: I need you to hit me and- ow!
Steph: oh, you mean at some future time?
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I so love Kon's encouragement and Dick's drunken antics. *pet's Tim*
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In my head, Kon waits until Tim is taking a drink of soda and then says "If you'd told me you liked dudes before Cassie and I hooked up, I wouldn't have to keep asking about your virginity."
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And I love Kon's eyebrows LOL.
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Also he stole Donna's cosmo. XD
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As though right this moment, Tim is real and covered in soda and turning bright red because as you described in another comment, Kon just basically said, "I'd do you."
You catch the teenager in all of them, and also Dick being Dick when drunk -- always amusing. That you didn't have Tim follow Kon's advice and 'go for it' with Dick was very Tim and also very human at the same time; he just got his brother back and he doesn't want to upset that apple cart. Tim's final observation that in some contexts the next best thing is also the best is so very true. ♥
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I couldn't remember if I'd ever seen Dick drunk in a comic, but I figure, most people just get more *themselves* when they're drunk. I mostly talk a ton. Dick probably climbs on everything, or tries to, and flirts with everyone around him. XD
The whole point of this was that final observation... that no matter what kind of crush Tim had/has on Dick, having Dick for a brother has got to be one of the best things that has ever happened to him. Everything else good, being Robin, Steph, etc, they all have a bad side, too, but being loved by Dick... is something really special.
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Tim is in love in every possible way, and I like that a lot. I also liked his total freak-out when Kon was about to start talking about it. To Kon it's nothing, but to Tim it's vitally important that this not get around.
I guess maybe Kon doesn't understand? He's always had the freedom to go for what he wants. But given Dick's, um... history... of saying yes when he should say no, then obviously the worst idea in the world would be to hit on him when he's drunk. I like that Tim doesn't go for it. He's a good kid.
Though, yeah, maybe he should tell Dick one of these days. If there's a chance and this is a bisexual-Nightwing universe. Otherwise, not so much.
This kind of reminds me of what I was going for in the end of the Tiny Tim 'verse. Once you've grown up, you understand the value of restraint. Tim can overdo the restraint, of course. But think of the complicated situations he gets himself into with only human powers. You say it well in the last line: “Sometimes,” he says, and pauses to take a sip, “the ‘next best thing’ is the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
He knows what he has, and that's priceless.
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Whether Dick is bisexual or not, I really feel like it would be a fundamentally bad idea for he and Tim to attempt a hook-up. As much as I believe they adore each other, in their own ways, there's just an imbalance there. It's something I've tried to address before... Tim revolves around Dick the way Dick revolves around Bruce... But Tim's not the only one in Dick's orbit. He's been orbiting the longest, and the most obsessively (unless you count Bruce and Dick as binary stars, which might not be far off), but he's sort of been circling at a distance for so long...
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It is uneven. Dick loves his brother with his whole heart, but, as you say, Tim's actually in orbit.
I don't think that all relationships have to be even or between equals... that's kind of a modern idea, anyway... but, yeah, there's so much else going on in Dick's life.
These ideas are definitely playing into the thing I'm writing now, which happens to be an AU (big surprise there), with Owlman's proteges going universe-hopping. I might try to make it novella-length; we'll see.
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I have almost finished the first chapter (which is explicit Dick/Tim, natch, with loads of bickering and a bit of emotional cruelty).
If you want, I'll send it to you when I finish the draft. I'd be happy to have someone tell me which parts to expand on and which parts to leave out. But of course it's fine if you want to wait until it's all-the-way finished.
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There's of course no requirement on you to comment, but if you want to, you should know that there's no time pressure. I might wait to post until I'm done with the thing, and that will be at least a month from now and maybe more.
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I really liked this one; it seemed very... um. Poignant?
Tim is so wise for his years... so cautious. I like that. I like that he's tentative and patient. I like that he waited for Kon. :)
Thanks for sharing, love.
Oh. And I love Guy Gardner. Love him.
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Tim *is* wise for his years. I think that's a huge part of his charm - he's *smart*, yes, but he's *wise*, too, and that's something different - something you earn.
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Ah ha ha. Oh. Oh Tim. Oh Kon.
Oh Tim hopelessly in love with Dick.
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Meg's art is amazing. If you haven't, you should click through the link under the picture and come to love her like I do. ^___^
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As much as I love the idea of Tim and Dick. We all know it wouldn't really work. There are going to be parts of both of them that'd just...fracture if they ever managed to even talk about the obession, the family, the big looming shadow of Bruce. And maybe this way Kon can make Tim happy on his own?
I really liked this. It's beautiful and believable, and I adore Bart's part in it.
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This piece was perfect in its imperfection. But as much as I like Tim/Dick it just isn’t ideal to me. I think they both need someone to compliment them and while they are rather different their also rather alike, both very much in need (and needy) of other people thus it works better for them if their partners are more independent. So, mostly I think they work best as brothers, even though I think Tim’s crush on Dick will never really diminish (even after all the crap) and that’s the way, ah-ah I like it, ah-ah.
And I’m gonna go ahead and assume that Kon and Tim hooked up a little later that night :).
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I love Dick/Tim, too, but god would they ever be the pairing of codependent doom. kirax2 and I wrote a thing (really just RP we sort of textified) called Stripped that hits on some of the reasons why. As much as they love each other, a romantic relationship between them could never be healthy or well advised.
And I’m gonna go ahead and assume that Kon and Tim hooked up a little later that night :)
When Kon said he couldn't believe Tim never told him he was into dudes, he was thinking of ALL THE SEX they missed out on over the years.