1.
Tim didn't like to make much of a fuss. Parents gone again? Whatever. Behave and keep your head down? Ok. Batman needed a Robin? Cool. He could do that. Stay out late. Don't tell your parents. Don't tell your friends. Don't complain when the people close to you continue to meet unfortunate ends. Don't hold any hard feelings when the last Robin (one of those "unfortunate end" types) comes back from his grave to try to kill you, and don't complain when the new Robin tries to do the same, or when the few people you had left turn a cold shoulder. No. Tim didn't like to be a nuisance.
So when he realized he might be harboring less than platonic feelings for his long time best friend and confidant, he squashed those feelings hard and ruthlessly. Conner had spent the better part the year dead, and the better part of his life bouncing between denial and barely concealed PTSD. If Tim didn't have time for his own feelings, Conner wouldn't either. So for the majority of his life, Tim, with the grace of anyone fully trained by the hand of Nightwing, managed to avoid the topic of his deep seated feelings for Connor entirely.
Which is why it was really baffling to him why Earth 515 Kon-El would not stop hitting on him.
"Really, it is not okay that you walk around like that I mean, is there like, a tactical reason for the clingy spandex or do you just like torturing me?"
They were in the kitchen at Titans Tower. Tim had been trying to get a glass of milk. Ever the master at receiving praise, he poured half his glass on to the counter. He swore and grabbed a paper towel. Kon-El 515 laughed.
"What are you even doing up this late?" Tim asked as he mopped up his milk. It was 3:23 in the morning. Half the reason he was up was because he thought no one else would be.
"Cross dimensional jet lag." Kon-El 515 grinned. He looked like Conner. "What are you doing?"
"I was trying to drink." Tim was talking more to himself at this point. It was weird but, something about the alternate universe version of his best friend ogling him all the time made him feel a bit...put off. He turned his back to Kon-El to avoid that piercing blue gaze (Conner's eyes, but not) and gulped down his milk.
Kon-El, for his part, was not looking away. Tim could feel it.
"Oh my god. You don't sleep do you?"
This was not exactly a revelation to Tim. He had not slept in a long time. Therefore he deigned not to respond.
"Did you even change after that mission today? I bet you didn't did you, oh my god I bet you've been hunched over in your little batcave working on some- portal gun or something to get me back haven't you?"
That last sentence sounded...close.
Tim turned around slowly. Kon-El was right there. He must have been really tired to have not noticed. He frowned.
"You're kind of funny, you know?" Kon's voice was just above a whisper. "I look at you and it's like, I can see inside your head and - I can't, by the way, that's not a kryptonian superpower, but- I bet you've been up everyday like this since I got here, trying to get me home while everyone else... and-" he moved closer, "-I bet you have a name for it and everything. Category. Box. I'm not your Kon-El I'm something else I'm-"
"Kon-El 515." Tim had finished glass of milk but now he couldn't put it down, pinned by blue eyes (so familiar) to the kitchen counter.
"515?"
"If this is Earth 1, you're on Earth 515, at least, that's how I've been tracking it…" Tim trailed off, and Kon beamed at him, really, honest to goodness, looked at Tim like he was the best thing he could have tumbled into when he fell into this world.
"515? Ok. Yeah. I can work with that." He leaned closer. "Tim. You're going to tell me if this isn't ok right? Or, karate kick me to the head? I mean, I'd prefer you to talk but you seem like an actions speak sort of guy…"
Tim wasn't sure who leaned in first, him, or Kon, but they were kissing. And then it was something more than a kiss. He knew it was a mistake as soon as it happened.
Still, he didn't pull away.
2.
Conner Kent was a pretty nice guy. In the face of Cadmus, he kept his cool. Facing off with villains alone, he maintained his calm. Walking everyday in the memory of people he'd let get hurt, or vanish without chasing after them, he stayed level headed and good natured.
So, when Kon-El of Earth 515 stumbled into their universe without warning, no one was more surprised than Conner when the two did not get along. At all.
Kon-El 515 gave a low wolf whistle. "I don't think I've ever seen anybody move like that it's...impressive."
Across the room, Tim, who'd been running through a series of very standard stretches, froze, and turned bright red. Conner fumed a bit, and maybe bumped into Kon-El a little too hard on his way out of the gym. It didn't matter though. Kon-El 515 had eyes only for Tim, who was slinking away.
It's not like Conner had never noticed Tim. I mean, sure he never really noticed the way Tim's "normal" stretches were probably something master yogi's everywhere had wet dreams about. But Tim was a natural gymnast. Of course he could...move like that. There was no reason for people like Kon-El 515 to go around making note of it out loud.
Ever since Kon-El 515 arrived and started showering Tim with undivided attention and adoration, Tim had been in a perpetual state of red. It was absurd. Conner had never realized how utterly and truly terrible Tim was at receiving attention. All he did was turn red and run away. Run. Tim. Robin. The guy who faced down Killer Croc, Scarecrow, and Harley on a week to week basis rendered useless by lame lines like "I think you dropped something, oh look it's my heart" and "If you were a vegetable you'd be a cute-cumber".
(All kidding aside, the first words out of Kon-El 515's mouth, in order were: "Fuck," to Bart "Oh my god," to Conner, and "Am I dead? Are you an Angel?" both to Tim.)
So. Yes. Conner did not, in fact, like Kon-El 515. One might go so far as to say he disliked him.
And he kept careful track of the portal Tim was building to send him home.
"When do you think it will be finished?"
"Like I told you fifteen minutes ago, soon ."
"Yeah, but, what is soon? Is this a bat-soon or a super-soon?"
Tim regarded him with the most unamused, most stereotypically Tim face ever. "Soon."
Conner sighed and walked over to Tim's bed, collapsing in it face first. If it weren't for the bed the place wouldn't have looked like a room. It was too clean, and consisted mostly of work benches and computers that probably definitely were hooked up to whatever wonky bat-oracle system the batfamily was using these days. Or even scarier, it was hooked up to Tim's own personal system. Who knew what Tim had gotten up to while Conner had been dead, after all?
"You don't have a secret computer network or something hidden away from the batclan that you haven't told us about yet, do you?"
"...no."
Whatever, Connor would get the truth later. Now, he sat up instead, and watched Tim's back as he laboured over the alien device that had sent Kon-El 515 to them in the first place. After Cyborg looked at it the two resident geniuses had figured out a way to reverse the beam it produced, hopefully reversing the effect. The hows and whys were not something Connor or anyone else wanted to sit around and listen to, as long as it got done. Part of Connor regretted not asking, or maybe not being smart enough to understand the answer he was sure to get, as he watched the line of Tim's back bent over his work.
Conner drifted off to those vague thoughts of maybe asking Tim about something later.
The next morning Connor woke up to an empty room. It wasn't unusual, Tim liked to do weird things like curl up in the kitchen or forget to sleep entirely and go for a morning run. Connor didn't think much of it.
Connor went to the kitchen. No Tim, but there was an empty carton of milk. He gave the surrounding a quick once over with his x-ray vision, and at first, he thought maybe Tim really was gone, before he caught a glimpse of the figure on the roof. With Kon-El.
Without reason Connor felt a stone settle in his stomach. He decided to wait it out. Maybe they were talking about how they were going to get Kon-El home. As long as he didn't focus his super hearing he could believe that.
Except the morning came. Cassie came downstairs for coffee, Gar was hanging in the living room, and after eternity, Tim and Kon-El came down and sat side by side at the kitchen bar.
Connor watched with increased unexplained annoyance as Kon-El 515 and Tim continued to sit too close together, eat too close together, brush their hands too close together. Kon-El would get close, not quite touching, and Tim would get red, and it was all quite infuriating.
Connor secretly hoped Kon-El turned out to be evil, or something.
When he saw them kiss, that was when it finally hit him, and maybe Connor was just slow, but he liked to think that maybe dying, and being half Luthor, and everything else had just distracted him but he would have figure it out eventually.
They were on the roof of Titans Tower, the device was active, Kon-El 515 was finally on his way out of their lives forever, when he stopped, swooped down, and kissed Tim right before Connor and everybody. Tim looked a little red, but less so than Connor thought should have been expected, and Kon-El 515 looked so god damned pleased.
And then he was gone.
And no one was talking about the kiss, it was like it didn't even matter. But it did. It mattered to Connor. Quite a bit actually.
That night on his way to bed, Connor caught Tim in the hall outside his room.
"Are you going to sleep finally?"
"Yes."
"Liar."
Tim smiled. He didn't blush. Conner wasn't sure he could make Tim blush.
"If you're going to be up all night, you could use some company."
"I suppose."
"Tim. I would like to keep you company."
He didn't quite blush. Probably, Conner thought, he was still thinking Conner was just being a good friend. He was a good friend. Definitely. But he was also...him. And Tim was who he was. And all this time they'd been running together like clockwork or something when they could have been so much more and maybe Connor was a little bitter that 515 punk took some of his thunder but he was sure as hell not going to let the opportunity left in his wake, the realization of what he and Tim could be, go to waste.
"Fine. Come on in.
3.
Kon-El's world began the moment he laid eyes on Tim Drake.
Ok. That wasn't totally true, because it actually began when he woke up in a test tube with artificial Kryptonian memories and a very confused Superman to answer to. But that wasn't important because when Kon saw Tim Drake's gorgeous blue eyes for the first time he forgot how to fly.
Literally. He fell on top of the guy.
"Am I dead?"
"No."
"Are you an Angel?"
And Tim turned the color of red kryptonite. Which is to say, very red.
The thing was, Tim just was unlike anyone Kon-El had ever met. In his own world, no one could keep up with Superman, or even him, let alone a human with no powers to speak of. Tim had to be smart in a way Kon couldn't even fathom, and he'd been doing it since he was-
"-16? That's amazing. You must be, just, wow."
Across the room, the other Superboy gave a too loud snort. Kon glared a little. Did this bumbling mockery of himself not realize what it was that was sitting in front of him? How did he have time to be a dick when Tim was right here doing his weird Tim thing and being amazing? Kon-El felt like he'd known Tim forever, or better yet, met him a thousand times before and yet even that didn't come close to the ways he thought Tim was amazing. And if he was only going to get this short time with him, he would use it well.
He'd never used so many bad lines in his life.
"Are you religious, because I think you're the answer to all my prayers."
"Do you have a map? I'm getting lost in your eyes."
"I think this fell out of your pocket."
"Spandex doesn't have pockets-"
"-Oh look it's my heart."
It always ended the same way, Tim turned red and ran away. But he kept coming back too. He sat with Kon at dinner, and let Kon overstay his welcome in his room. If anything the amount of Tim in Kon's life seemed to be increasing, not decreasing, with every awkward encounter and it occurred to Kon that maybe Tim didn't get a lot of attention in his own world, and he'd be damned if he didn't try and fix that.
"Oh my god. You don't sleep do you?" he asked one night.
Tim didn't respond so he moved closer, leaning over Tim's shoulder as he went. "Did you even change after that mission today? I bet you didn't did you, oh my god I bet you've been hunched over in your little bat cave working on some- portal gun or something to get me back haven't you?"
That was something Kon liked to do, hypothesize about what Tim did, just, like, in an everyday sort of manner. It was kind of sad really, how badly he'd been caught up in his own infatuation with this boy.
Tim turned around slowly. Kon took it to mean he could keep going. "You're kind of funny, you know? I look at you and it's like, I can see inside your head and - I can't, by the way, that's not a kryptonian superpower, but- I bet you've been up everyday like this since I got here trying to get me home, and-" he moved closer, "-I bet you have a name for it and everything. Category. Box. Whatever. I'm not your Kon-El I'm something else I'm-"
"Kon-El 515." Tim said it like a sacred whisper, more a breath than a sound, and Kon felt his heart leap into his throat.
"515?" 515. His own little designation in Tim's brain for him and him alone, not be shared by the Kons and Conners of other worlds or times. He played that over in his head a bit and liked how it looked.
"If this is Earth 1, you're on Earth 515, at least, that's how I've been tracking it…" Tim fidgeted under Kon's gaze, which probably looked terrifying if the feeling of his face trying to split in two with pure joy was anything to go by.
"515? Ok. Yeah. I can work with that." Oh god was that lame? He was so lame. . "Tim. You're going to tell me if this isn't ok right? Or, karate kick me to the head? I mean, I'd prefer you to talk but you seem like an actions speak sort of guy…" What was he doing? Was he saying that? Should he stop?
He leaned in, or maybe Tim did, and he couldn't stop smiling.
Kissing Tim was better than making him blush. Kissing Tim made him blush. But it also made him make sounds and do things and the slide of lips and the feel of his mouth and when Kon's tongue snaked into his mouth he thought this is how I'm going to die, kissing the most amazing person in the multiverse and he thought about pulling away to tell Tim that (because it would make him blush) but got distracted by mouth and tongue and heat.
It didn't get much further than that before Tim pulled away. He looked red, but also ashamed, and like he thought he was going to get caught. Kon caught him gently by the arms.
"Are you ok?"
"Yeah."
Liar.
"Come on."
Kon let him upstairs, to the roof, away from whatever prying eyes Tim was imagining in his head.
Tim smiled at him, and Kon decided he'd made the right move. They settled onto the ledge, and after a moment's hesitation, Tim leaned against him. Kon swore he would never move again if Tim would just stay like that.
"You're...very nice you know," Tim said softly.
"Thanks, I think. You're very nice too," Kon said.
"I mean...you just...are." Tim sounded tired, but also vulnerable. Kon risked bringing a hand up to rest it in his hair.
"You know you're kind of amazing?" He said. "I mean not just with the fighting or the undoubtable science skills you're using to send me home I mean, everything. The weird things."
"You don't know all the weird things."
"You don't know how badly I want to stay here forever and learn about them though."
Tim lifted his head. Kon can saw unspoken words, but neither said anything. They watched the sun rise.
This Tim couldn't be his, not really. This marvelous person who thought that Kon's bad lines were nice and put up with his rambling.
Maybe, Kon thought, there is a Tim 515 .