A/N TW - language that appears racist at first to some in the scene but is only misinterpreted that way, because Tim's dad is both an idiot and an asshole. He gets called out on it, though.

Chapter 3

"Oh, my," Tim and Conner heard a somewhat alarmed adult say from somewhere over their heads.

Tim raised his eyes from being locked with Conner's outrageously gorgeous blue ones to the lofty origin of the voice that had tried really quite hard in only two syllables to find an appropriate tonal balance that weighed protecting the students in her care from society's wrath regarding illicit non-soul-relations as much as protecting herself from the wrath of said students' parents, who might be wont to determine that a lowly private school teacher had no right to lecture two such illustriously wealthy children about the dangers of full-body-on-the-grass-cuddles-complete-with-heart-eyes, even if said parents would rant and rave at the students about it themselves later that night behind closed doors.

"It's ok, we're soulmates," Tim said somewhat drowsily to the hand-wringing Ms. Won.

Ms. Won drew in a surprised breath, raising her eyebrows as she looked the pair over with new eyes.

"We're Premarked," Conner grinned back up at her. "We both feel it."

"Oh, boys," Ms. Won breathed out in awe. "How wonderful," she said in a hushed, reverent voice. "The Universe knew that you needed your Soulmate today, Tim," she sniffed, her eyes starting to fill with some tears that she hurriedly tried to wipe away.

Tim had to swallow as his own eyes started to water again.

"Yeah," he mumbled, looking back over at Conner who was watching over him protectively from his comfortable position on top of Tim that he didn't show the slightest embarrassment from being caught in.

"Tim's father is here to take him home," Ms. Won said, though, prompting Conner and Tim to both groan at the thought of getting up, although Conner obediently rolled off of Tim and pulled him up to his feet.

"I'm going home with Tim," Conner breezily announced as he brushed the grass off the back of Tim's uniform jacket and pants.

Their English teacher gave Conner an eyebrow that could just barely be called snarky.

"Your father will have to give permission for that, Conner," was all she said, though. "Mr. Drake can't just sign you out."

"Dad will be fine with it," Conner said, already pulling his phone out, but Ms. Won shook a finger at him.

"You need to call him from the office," she said.

"Fine," Conner grumbled, sliding his phone away again into his leather jacket and taking Tim's hand in his, interlocking their fingers and grinning when Tim squeezed them just as Conner was doing the same.

"Do you need to get anything from your locker or last class, Tim?" Ms. Won asked, perhaps accidentally not including Conner in her question.

"No," Tim muttered, really not caring whether or not his books and backpack were still there whenever he might return to school, which if he had his way would be never.

He had his phone, and that was all he needed.

"Do you need anything, Conner?" he asked his soulmate.

And despite the hollowness in his heart, there was a tiny muscle in Tim's feet that wanted to skip for joy at the word.

"Nah, I'm good," Conner said, smiling mischievously back at him in a way that said that there was no 'accidentally' about his teacher ignoring his simultaneously imminent departure.

Conner was not the teachers' favorite, by far, and not just because Lex was his dad. Tim, however, would have been more than glad to befriend Conner if it wasn't for who his dad was. The former Robin had secretly shot more than a few admiring glances at Conner over the last few months since his arrival in Metropolis, enamored with Conner's sass and outrageous nature but he couldn't go around making friends with the son of a super-villain, even if he wasn't currently Robin.

And... oh. That was going to become interesting, trying to explain his soulmate to Bruce.

Not to mention, Conner lived in Metropolis, and Tim was planning his escape back to Gotham even as their teacher walked them down the school's pretentious main corridor which was filled with showcase after showcase of crew and lacrosse and field hockey trophies, and -

"Timmy?" Conner was asking him, gripping his hand a little tighter and looking down at him with concern. "You still with me?"

"Always," Tim automatically replied, answering his own question instead of Conner's.

They'd figure it out. They were soulmates. And Steph was gone, so Conner was all Tim had left.

"Timothy?" Jack Drake said in a horrified voice when Tim and Conner walked hand in hand into the main office behind Ms. Won, who hastily whispered something in the Headmistress's ear before scurrying away to safety.

"Dad, this is Conner," Tim said. "My soulmate."

Jack's jaw dropped as he took in the three inch spikes protruding from the shoulders of Conner's leather jacket, which were only slightly shorter than the gelled spikes on top of his head, and the hem of Conner's white button-down shirt, which, aside from hanging outside his pants where it most certainly didn't belong was artfully frayed into tattered strips littered with safety pins, and Conner's tie was black, yes, but uniform ties were most certainly not supposed to have skulls on them.

Jack took a deep breath.

"Tim," he began, "it's very rare to be Premarked. Are you sure…?" he said suggestively, in a patented fatherly-tone designed to instill doubt in one's offspring.

"Totally sure," Conner said flatly, meeting his future father-in-law's eyes with a menacing glint in his own that were, dear God, coated with eyeliner.

On the top and bottom lids, no less. Oh, my, Jack thought. Earrings, too, he noted. Several.

Jack was revving himself up to speak again but Tim got his words out first.

"My hip pain has only been getting stronger," he said. "It feels like a bad toothache, now," he said. "But in a totally good way," he grinned up at Conner, whose dark look for Jack turned tender in an instant.

"Your hip, too, Conner?" Headmistress Martins asked.

Conner hesitated for the slightest second.

"It doesn't exactly hurt," he said, "but my whole hip is vibrating like a swarm of bees, and yeah, it's getting more intense."

"Well, that certainly sounds like Premarked to me," the Headmistress smiled before giving Tim a much more sympathetic look.

"I am so sorry for the loss of your friend, Tim," she said gently. "We won't expect to see you back at school for at least the rest of the week," she said, "and longer, if needed," she added to Mr. Drake, who was still silently fuming.

"Don't expect me, either," Conner said. "I'm going home with Tim."

"Now, I really don't think -" Jack began to say, but the Headmistress broke all parental protocol by very gently laying a hand on his forearm to stop him.

He glared at her, deeply offended.

"Why don't you call your father on your cellphone, Conner, to ask for permission, and then let me talk to him?" Headmistress Martins said. "Mr. Luthor is usually far too busy to take phone calls from the school line himself," she said, giving Jack a very significant look.

Jack choked on his inhale.

"Lex - you're Lex's boy?" he sputtered out to Conner, his eyes going wide as a huge, enraptured smile broke out onto his face, almost as ghoulish as Joker-gas victims wore, Tim idly noted.

"Obviously," Conner muttered as he pulled out his phone.

"Tim!" Jack exclaimed, beaming now. "This is fantastic! Premarked with Lex Luthor's son? Why, this is absolutely fabulous news," the head of Drake Industries proudly proclaimed to a son who could care less about his father's sudden change of heart.

"What a pity it had to come on such a sad day," the Headmistress said sharply, giving Jack a cool look.

"What? Oh - yes, er, terrible tragedy about your friend," Jack mumbled to Tim. "I'm - very sorry, son," he added under the Headmistress's stern eye and Conner's fully malevolent one.

"Right," Tim said shortly.

If his father hadn't forced him to stop being Robin, Steph wouldn't even be dead.

Dead. Dead. She was dead. Dead.

"It was the Brown girl, I assume?" Jack was saying.

"DUDE!" Conner spat out, looking at Jack with blatant contempt. "Racist, much?" he snarled.

Jack gaped at him and Tim began quietly snickering as Conner exchanged a disgusted look with Headmistress Martins, who happened to be black.

"No - No!" Jack gasped, realizing his faux pas. "No, no, no!" he said more quickly. "Her last name is Brown. The girl is Caucausian. I assure you," he said.

"The girl's name," Tim snarled in sudden anger, "was Stephanie, and she's dead," he snapped at his father.

An uneasy silence fell in the office, which the Headmistress made absolutely no effort to alleviate.

"I'll call my dad," Conner finally said to no one, dialing the number.

"Hey Dad," he said a second later, and Tim felt tears starting in the backs of his eyes and not over Steph this time, because would Jack Drake even bother to pick up his phone at all, let alone on the first ring, if his son ever called him?

Why was a super-villain apparently a better father than his own?

"I'm ok," Conner was saying. "I met my soulmate, actually! We're Premarked."

"Yeah, that part's great," he said after a slight pause, "but we connected 'cause his best friend just died and he was really upset and I was trying to help."

"Tim Drake," Conner said a second later to Lex's obvious question. "I dunno, I'll ask," he said. "Is your name Jack?" he asked Tim's father.

"Yes," Jack Drake said, puffing up like a peacock.

Conner snorted.

"Yeah, that's him," Conner said back into the phone. "So I want to go home with Tim, that's ok, right? Ok. Ok. Ok," he said. "Love you, too," he added, making Tim's heart wrench even tighter as Conner handed the phone to the Headmistress saying his dad wanted to talk to her.

"You ok, Timmy?" Conner was asking him all soft and gentle in his ear, deliberately turning them away from Tim's awful father.

"I'll tell you about it later," Tim whispered, flicking his eyes backwards the barest bit, and Conner nodded in silent understanding.

The Headmistress was nodding and appeared to be wrapping her phone call up when she said, "Of course," and held Conner's phone out to Mr. Drake.

"Mr. Luthor would like a word," she said.

Jack beamed. Again. He was doing a really great impression of a headlight, Tim thought sourly.

"Ah, Lex!" Jack blustered into the phone.

"Jack!" Lex bellowed back to him on the other end of the line. "Fantastic news about our boys, although I'm sorry as hell for your son's loss, of course," Lex said.

"Of course, of course," Jack murmured, taking on an appropriately doleful tone.

"I assume you'll be staying at home with Tim for the rest of the day?" Lex asked with pause.

"I'm in a meeting I absolutely need to finish," he continued, breezing through Jack's sudden confused hesitation like the Metropolis Academy crew team on their way to gold. "I'll be done in about another hour, hour and a half, and then I'll clear my schedule and head over to your place. See you then?" Lex said, clearly expecting instant agreement.

"Yes, yes, of course!" Jack stuttered, despite the fact that he had been planning to drop Tim at their building and go straight back to work. "We'll see you then," he repeated weakly.

"Pull down the top shelf brandy," Lex chuckled. "I'll bring the cigars."

"Will do," Jack feebly chuckled back as Lex hung up.

"Well," Jack said, pulling out his handkerchief to dab the sweat off of his brow as Conner coldly reached out and plucked his phone from his hand.

"I'll take you home with us, then, Conner," Jack said, "and your father will be over when his meeting finishes."

Lex had been in a meeting? Tim thought, lanced by an even more piercing pain. And answered Conner's call on the first ring? He noticed the clock hands on the wall were well past the end of the lunch hour. Exactly how long had he and Conner been outside together by themselves before his father had managed to make it the five blocks from Drake Industries: Metropolis Branch, to Metropolis Academy? Tim wondered.

"Dad told me his plans," Conner was growling at Jack, looking for all the world like a semi-rabid hyena stalking its prey.

"Very good, then, very good," Jack said with a final pat of his handkerchief to his head, blissfully ignorant of his potential demise at the hand of his son's future mate.

"You'll just need to sign the boys out, Mr. Drake," Headmistress Martins said dryly, sliding the clipboard over to him with a pitying look for Tim and Conner as soon as Jack was hunched over it.

"I'm truly sorry, Tim," she said quietly. "If there's anything we here at Metropolis Academy can do to help you through your loss, don't hesitate to let us know," she said.

"Ok," Tim mumbled to that well-meaning but absolutely pointless offer.

Headmistress Martins was persisting, though.

"Our guidance counselor can do some grief sessions with you when you return and recommend a good outside therapist," she was saying.

Tim sighed. He got it. She was trying to be nice. She really was and if he was coming back to school and if Steph had died in a car accident instead of being murdered by Black Mask, her suggestions might even be helpful, but all Tim wanted to do was get back to Gotham (with Conner at his side, preferably) crawl into his real bed in his real house (which was Wayne Manor, obviously, and not his parents' home) and stay asleep for the next hundred or so years until his heart grew back, except for going out on his night patrols as Robin again, of course.

Jack Drake could go screw himself, Tim thought bitterly.

Conner wrapped his arm around Tim's waist and tugged him into his side as they trudged after Jack to the curb outside the school where the Drake's driver was waiting with his flashers on. Jack hesitated before awkwardly getting into the front seat rather than sitting in the back with the two boys, and Conner snorted again under his breath, which made Tim giggle a little bit, too.

It was nice to have somebody who appreciated how cold his father was, Tim realized, leaning into Conner and tucking his head into his shoulder.

"They're Premarked," Mr. Drake boasted to his driver, who was giving the two teens a surreptitious glance in the rearview mirror with the smallest frown of judgment at the corner of his mouth.

"This is -"

"Nobody," Conner interrupted Jack loudly. "Dude. You can't go sharing shit that like without a proper press release," Conner said, rolling his eyes up to heaven. "Do you want Tim hounded by reporters at Steph's funeral?" he said, glaring at Jack with eyes that looked almost ready to burn the older man into oblivion.

Tim shivered.

That was… super hot.

"Oh," Jack said, his mouth falling open slightly. "I didn't think - it's just Ted," he said, startling Tim that he actually knew his driver's name.

Conner narrowed his kohl-rimmed eyes at Jack.

"My dad's gonna be really pissed at you if you tell anybody who I am or who he is before he decides on our media strategy," he said knowingly.

Tim filed away for future use that the threat of Lex being angry at Jack made his dad turn pale and straighten right up. He smirked to himself in the privacy of the backseat and Conner, being the sensational soulmate that he was, noticed and smirked right back at him with a sexy wink thrown in for good measure.

Oh, Tim liked him a lot.

Maybe having a super-villain for a father-in-law wouldn't be such a bad thing, after all, Tim thought, if it got his own father off his back - but a more sinister thought suddenly gripped his stomach.

What if Conner was a villain, too? Or, at least, a villain in training? Oh, shit. Bruce was going to kill him. Oh, shit shit shit shit -

"Timmy?" Conner whispered in his ear. "Your heart rate's going through the roof. You ok, babe?" he murmured with concern.

And - oh. Conner had just called him babe and Tim was melting back into Conner's side in a happy puddle.

Conner couldn't be evil, right? Tim surely couldn't have an evil soulmate. Because Tim was a hero and the Universe didn't work that way.

He hoped.

A/N - Thanks for reading! Probably one more chapter of TimKon in Metropolis before we swing back to Jason in Gotham where Cass is soon to appear.

Comments are life! Please feed me, dear readers.

You can follow me on Tumblr as River9Noble. Come say hi!