Pretty sure this was for the Tim/Kon meme. I had too much fun writing it.
The Costume Makes the Man
It's all Bart's fault.
Kon isn't surprised at all. Most things usually are.
It happens because Bart is so incredibly bored that he's decided to go through every single book in the library of the Titans Tower. No one complains because heck, the things Bart learns on his reading sprees are usually pretty useful at some point.
"Kon! KonkonkonkonKON!"
Kon jumps at least a foot in the air and spills cereal and milk all over his lap as Bart pretty much explodes into being next to him. Kon has become more or less impervious to Bart's abrupt appearances, but Bart's not usually shrieking at the same time.
"Aw, fuck, man, my pants are wet!" Kon scrambles for a napkin and begins to dab at his pants cringing as the wet, cold feeling soaks past his jeans, past his underwear, and eeeew.
"Oh man, Kon, you gotta look at this it's hysterical, it's amazing, it's pure blackmail, can we print it on a giant posterboard and laminate it and—"
"Bart!" Kon slaps his hand on top of Bart's head to stop Bart from freakin' vibrating through the floor. "Dude, chill, save that energy for something really useful, like, girls or something. Heh, imagine what you could do with those vibrati—"
"No, no, no, look at this!" Bart shoves something under his nose, and Kon has to lean back to figure out what it is, because all he sees is a glob of colors at first.
Then his jaw drops.
"Is that a picture of—"
"Nightwing! And the Titans!" Bart crows in victory.
Oh man. This is pure blackmail.
Superpowers are awesome. It means that by the time Tim stops being an antisocial nerd and decides to come out of the substitute cave he's turned his room into, Bart and Kon have indeed run to the nearest print shop, printed the picture onto giant 12x16 poster board, laminated it and gone back to the Tower to hang it across the living room.
Tim freezes when he walks into the room.
"Uh." He looks at Kon and Bart, who at this point are able to keep a mostly-straight face on only because they've already spent the past hour laughing their asses off. "Why is that there?"
"Inspiration," Kon says.
"Motivation," Bart adds. "So that we never go back to those dark ages."
"So that we stay the handsome sons-o'-bitches we are right now. Minus you, of course. Your buzz-kill tendencies sort of cancel out your looks." Kon grins apologetically, but this is too much of a long-running joke between them to let the opportunity pass.
"Oh God." Tim covers his eyes and walks past them into the kitchen. "Take that down before my brain melts. I mean, it's not like we don't give him enough grief about it." He glances at the picture of the Titans, with Starfire's massive cloud of hair, Jericho's shirt, and the worst part: Nightwing's original outfit.
"More like Discowing," Bart giggles.
"How did anyone even take him seriously?" Kon wonders, braving another look at it. It's so horrible you can only glance at it occasionally.
Tim shakes his head and opens the refrigerator and takes out one of the yogurts he and Cassie like so much. "Did you ever see the original Robin costume? Nightwing was pretty used to flashy costumes, so to speak."
Kon strokes his jaw thoughtfully, "Is that the one that kinda but not really looks like yours?"
"Oh, this one!" Bart reappears with the album, and flips to an earlier picture. "The scaly underwear costume?"
Tim chokes slightly on a spoonful of yogurt. "Uh, yeah, that one."
"That is a fashion crime right there if I've ever seen one." Kon gags and Bart giggles again as he flips through the rest of the pictures at light speed. "Man, that's like, European bathing-suit bad, can you imagine that thing riding up your ass?"
"Yeah, it wasn't all that comfortable." Tim wrinkles his nose, looking like he's… remembering.
Kon blinks. "Wait. Wait. Please tell me you didn't—"
Tim begins turning red. That adorable little cherry-red that spreads even to the tip of his nose. "Dude, Kon, I didn't have a choice. I had to use the last Robin's costume, there wasn't one for me yet cause I wasn't a Robin at that time. Trust me, that was the first thing I changed."
Kon barely registers whatever it is Tim just said. He feels his jaw muscle slacking and manages to tense it again before it drops all the way down to the floor. He's looking at Tim muttering something at Bart, who's gleefully going through the pictures and making comments in between peals of laughter, but he's not really seeing. He glances at one of the pictures and sees it – the little red jacket, the cute yellow cape, and the scaly green underwear.
"Dude, Kon, seriously, it's not that big a deal," Tim mutters darkly, cheeks still pink even as he tries to be menacing. As if he could pull it off, when Kon has seen him playing with kittens and making flower necklaces with Arsenal's daughter. "If you hold this against me, I swear I'll hack your room's controls and turn off the hot water."
Kon has to make a conscious effort not to glance down at Tim's lap. "Uh, yeah, of course, man. You gotta do what you gotta do."
"Yeah, and you did it in style," Bart adds, snickering.
"Shut it, Bart."Tim ducks his head and continues eating his yogurt, and at any other moment, Kon would be grinning like crazy because he knows Tim is still completely mortified and this is prime teasing territory.
But Kon thinks something just short-circuited in his brain, because all it's doing is mentally cutting out teenage-Nightwing's face from the pictures and pasting in Tim's.
Tim.
In scaly green underwear.
Kon's brain imagines running his fingers along the ridges of smooth, hard scales and cupping that firm weight in his hands, and the suddenness and realness of the thought jolts him back to reality and he's really glad that he's sitting at a table and there's a tabletop covering him.
And those legs. Kon imagines Tim doing all his usual flips and tricks, doing a roundhouse kick, flying through the air with his jumplines, doing a split— all with that smooth expanse of pale white skin, firm, lean muscle bulging and contracting, flawless, just out in the open to squeeze and stroke, the knobby bones of his ankles peeking out above those pixie boots— Kon swallows and shifts in his chair.
"Um, hey, I just remembered I left the Xbox on," he says, turning in his chair so that by the time he stands up he's got his back to them. "Gonna go turn it off before the stupid thing overheats."
Tim and Bart frown, but Tim shrugs and goes back to his yogurt and Bart keeps on flipping through the pictures, somehow having laid out half the fridge's contents around him as he does so.
Kon pats himself on the back for best excuse ever and hurries to his room.
"Hey, what's up, baby Supes?"
Kon swallows down an immediate protest to the nickname. It's all for a larger purpose, after all. He adjusts the communicator in his ear. "Uh, hey, Nightwing. I had, um, a question for you."
"What can I do ya for?" Nightwing is definitely grinning. Kon can totally hear it.
"So… you know your old Robin costume?"
"Uh… well, yeah, I know it pretty well…"
"Any chance there's an extra around somewhere?" There's a moment of silence, and yeah, Nightwing is probably wondering what the hell this is about so Kon adds, "It's, um, for a joke. Bart and I are trying to play a joke on Tim."
"Really?" Nightwing's voice is absolutely gleeful. "Anything to show my kid brother the meaning of fun. I bet there's one that escaped our spring cleaning. I'll see if I can dig it up for ya."
"Awesome." And because Kon can't ever keep his mouth shut, "By the way, glad you've ditched the 80's gear, Discowing."
Nightwing groans. "Seriously, will people ever let it go?"
Kon smirks. "Probably not."
"Meany. Well, I gotta go catch some baddies, but I'll let ya know when I find it."
"Cool."
The line goes dead and Kon exhales.
Kon is not going to tell anyone, ever, how long he held the outfit in his hands, turning it over and rubbing it between his fingers as he imagined Tim in it. But now that he's thoroughly exhausted and enjoyed every fantasy he'd come up with, it's time for action.
"Hey, Tim!" Kon calls out, flying over and landing at Tim's doorway. Tim glances up from his computer, face bathed in blue, raising an eyebrow in query.
Kon leans against the doorway, crossing his arm and putting on his best leering, knock-the-ladies-out grin and rakes his eyes over Tim's body meaningfully. Tim just stares back, probably confused as to why Kon's looking at him with a look usually reserved for hot cheerleaders, until he catches sight of what Kon is holding in his hand. Kon relishes the sound of Tim's heartbeat suddenly skyrocketing. Kon licks his lips slowly, imagining those slim legs exposed and how tight certain other body parts would look in certain other parts of the outfit. He waggles his eyebrows.
"Any chance you'd wear the old Robin costume for me?"
Also, Bart is the only character whom I feel justified in writing with capslock.