Chapter Text
One of Tim’s fondest memories was the camping trip he’d taken in his early days with Young Justice. It had felt like the first time they’d truly solidified as a team—and when they’d become proper friends. It was the first time Tim had really considered having a friend group while in the mask. Before that, “friends” were a thing that had been neatly segregated into his “real life.”
Of course, his calling them friends while staying masked had caused problems, most especially with Conner, who’d taken a harder line stance on the “truth” part of “truth, justice, and the American way” than anyone else wearing the shield. At the time, Tim had had some very uncharitable thoughts that it was easy for Conner to say when he didn’t even have a private life to protect. It made Tim wince to think of it now… but if a person wasn’t wincing because of things they’d thought and done when they were fourteen, had they ever grown up at all?
Young Justice had grown into the type of friends that Tim, at sixteen, had earnestly said he loved like life preservers in a flood. It felt good to have a love that was full of gratitude.
Conner, Cassie, and Bart were still his dearest friends, but though they’d never actually disbanded, it hadn’t felt like they were a team in quite a while. The Justice League restructuring had turned those missions into much more of a “go where you’re told and do what you’re told” operation. Logistically, Tim didn’t disagree with any of the decisions made. But it was quite a bit less fun. Tim missed the downtime. He missed the goofing off, the ribbing, the camaraderie. Another camping trip had felt like the perfect opportunity to reset and reconnect.
Tim found a national park that allowed backcountry camping, so that they wouldn’t have to be mindful of any neighboring campers, and organized a long weekend of hiking, rock climbing, whitewater rafting, and campfires. In the radio-less, cell-less, internet-less wilderness, they were as far removed from the stressors of public life as they could possibly get. Tim rented a big truck—not because they really needed it to carry all the gear and food up into the mountains, but because Tim wasn’t immune to the allure of driving a big car off-road—and they rode off into the wilderness (Bart got out—literally phased right through the moving vehicle—a few times to stretch his legs).
They found a good clearing, pitched the tent, and cooked dinner on the fire. Tim tried to organize a dishwashing line, and Bart just vibrated everything until all the food particles shook off. Conner and Cassie wedged everything that could attract bears into the highest branches of the trees. They settled in around the fire as the sun went down, sitting too close to one another to really be encircling it.
Bart began to skewer marshmallows. “How ‘bout a game of truth or dare?”
“Isn’t that a little juvenile?” Tim asked.
“Chicken,” Conner jumped at the chance to accuse him. “What, you still hanging on to some truths? We already know all the good ones.”
There was the one. But the chances of him being asked to confess to crushing on Conner were so minuscule as to be nonexistent.
“Yeah, Tim, don’t be a spoilsport,” Cassie said. “Who wants to go first?”
“Me,” Bart said. He’d assembled a shish kebab of marshmallows and chocolate squares and stuck the whole thing in the fire. “Conner. Truth or dare.”
“Dare,” Conner said with an eager grin. He was leaning back on his hands, his whole long body stretched out like a chaise longue that Tim very much wanted to fall into. The firelight was lovingly painting his features in gold.
So, yeah. This truth was one of the good ones.
“I dare you to get me a sack of chicken fingers from Foosackly’s,” Bart said.
Conner’s grin fell. “That’s not a dare, that’s interstate delivery!”
“And get all the sauces and mix them together,” Bart added.
“They sell chicken by the sack?” Cassie asked. She sounded both repulsed and fascinated.
“It’s twenty pieces.” As an afterthought, Bart said, “I guess you guys can have some.”
Conner groaned and heaved himself upright with exaggerated reluctance. “Fine, you gremlin, I’ll get your fast food. Not like we’re supposed to be roughin’ it or anything…” he grumbled. The air whooshed when he disappeared, the flames of the fire pulled toward the spot he’d vacated before they unbent back toward the sky.
The sap in the campfire logs popped and sizzled, and the nighttime sounds of the forest grew louder in their companionable silence. Bart retrieved his stick from the fire, scraped the puffed-up, sticky marshmallows and molten chocolate off onto a paper plate, and used it as dip for his graham crackers. Tim followed their fire’s thin plume of smoke up to the hole in the canopy that let them see the sky. Shooting stars darted across the expanse like little silver fishes.
“Thanks for arranging everything, Tim,” Cassie said.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” Tim said. He could practically sleepwalk through the logistics of putting together a camping trip.
Cassie’s mouth quirked up. “Doesn’t have to be a big deal for me to appreciate it.”
She locked her hands around her knees, leaned her weight back, and gazed up at the sky. “You even got us a meteor shower.” Her eyes turned slightly wistful as she watched them flare and fade. “A whole sky full of wishes. Wouldn’t that be nice.”
Bart glanced briefly upward, but it didn’t hold his attention. He was always more interested in something he could touch (even when he really shouldn’t). He folded his paper plate over and fed it to the center of the campfire. The flames turned purple where they licked over it. As soon as it was consumed, he started looking for a fire-poking stick. “Maybe I should’ve dared Kon to catch a star for me. But I’ve got a craving.”
Cassie hummed thoughtfully. “It’d be so cool to learn magic. Do you think I could talk Jason Blood into teaching me stuff if I told him he was my favorite of Mom’s ex-boyfriends?”
“You wanna get immortally linked to a demon?” Bart poked at the fire, chipping off red-hot pieces of the log.
“Well not that specifically…”
“Why do you want to learn magic?” Tim asked, and, “Bart, you’re going to make it collapse.”
“Yara’s got the demigod thing on lock, I need something else to stand out,” Cassie said.
“You stand out,” Tim said. One of the logs fell flat, smothering the embers and throwing out eye-searing smoke. “Bart…”
“I got it I got it.” Bart found a notched stick and rearranged the logs until they were all propping each other up again. His flurry of movement fanned more air into the fire, and it flared.
Conner reappeared, and the flames bent and swayed again. He thrust a plastic bag at Bart. “Here’s your chicken and nasty sauce,” he said and fell down into a cross-legged sit.
“Great,” Bart said. He dug into the carton of chicken, popped the lid off the tub of sauce, and held it out toward Conner. “I dare you to drink it.”
“What! You can’t double-dip dares,” Conner sputtered.
“You said this wasn’t a dare, it was delivery service,” Bart said with a smirk.
“It counts as a dare if the daree has already completed it,” Tim ruled. “Conner, you go.”
“Tim.” Conner steepled his fingers together and smirked. “Please choose ‘truth.’”
“Dare,” Tim said.
“Ha, you fell into my trap!” He pointed a finger at the carton. “Dare you to drink it.”
Tim sighed. “This is the thanks I get for backing you up.” He delicately picked the heavy carton from Bart’s hand and brought it to his lips. Bart swiftly dunked a finger in it before Tim could take a sip. Tim shot him a look, then tipped it back.
Tim kept his composure because he knew Conner was waiting on tenterhooks for him to retch. He forced himself to swallow. “That does not mix well,” he said mildly.
“You’re nuts. It’s sweet, it’s spicy, it’s tangy, it’s smokey—the perfect balance,” Bart asserted.
Cassie leaned over, dipped a pinky in it, and thoughtfully sucked it off. Tim noticed Conner notice her lips purse around the digit. “Hm,” she said. “Fucking weird.”
“Now I’ve gotta try it,” Conner groused. He brushed fingers with Tim when he took the carton from him, and… was Tim noticing Conner notice? Or was that wishful thinking?
Tim had done quite a lot of reflection on how insane he had gotten over a crush that he hadn’t known was a crush. He had kind of hoped that self-awareness would help him retain some dignity this time around. But he didn’t think that it was.
Conner threw back a mouthful of the sauce and immediately pulled a face. “Yuck! That is way too many flavors.”
“I have a more refined palate than the rest of you,” Bart said, housing chicken fingers. He took the carton back from Conner and liberally doused them with the concoction.
“Your turn, Tim,” Cassie said. She brought her finger back to her lips to get the last of the sauce out from under her nail.
“Conner: truth or dare,” Tim said.
“You guys are ganging up on me,” Conner griped. “Dare.”
Tim did briefly consider daring him to catch a star for him. But it felt like such an overtly romantic request that Tim might as well have dared Conner to stick his hand in his chest and pluck out his heart.
“Give me your jacket.”
Conner clutched the lapels tighter around his chest. “What, for keeps?!”
Honestly, Tim had expected more argument over whether that was a dare. “For the weekend. I forgot how cold the mountains get at night, even in the summer.”
“Oh.” Conner’s grip relaxed, and he smirked at Tim. “City boy,” he teased him while he peeled the leather down his arms. Every single muscle in his arms and shoulders flexed in the process of taking it off, and when he held it out to Tim, it left him in a tight short-sleeved shirt.
Cassie met his eyes over Conner’s shoulder and gave him a very knowing look. Tim smiled blithely back at her as he shrugged into the oversized jacket. Immediately, he was enveloped in Conner’s lingering body heat and the scent of his skin. When he let his nose graze the inside of the collar while he adjusted it, it was at least a little bit because Cassie was still watching him.
Ever since he and Cassie had tacitly acknowledged what had really been going on between them the year Conner was dead, everything between them felt charged in a good way. He felt like he was in competition with her, but it was competitiveness in a way that made him feel closer to her, like a friendly rivalry.
Bart dumped the now-empty, grease-stained cardboard carton into the fire, and it flared hotter. “You cold? I can warm you up.” Bart slid over to Tim. His outline fuzzed, and the temperature rose enough that a bit of sweat gathered at the base of Tim’s hairline.
But he wasn’t going to take off the jacket. “I’m good now, thanks.”
Conner leaned back on his hands and regarded Tim in his jacket. “Looks good on you… ‘course, the ‘S’ jacket makes everyone look good.”
“Nah, that’s just you. The other supers can’t pull it off,” Cassie said.
Conner’s chin bobbed, first ducking in shy pleasure and then jutting back out smugly. He exuded “go on, go on” energy. “C’mon, we’re superheroes. The clothes maketh the man at least a little.”
“I fight supervillains in jeggings and my Adidas,” Cassie pointed out.
Conner’s gaze pulled down to the stretchy material in question, lingered for a moment on her legs, and then was yanked back up. “Cassie! Truth or dare,” Conner said.
“Gimme the D,” Cassie said. Conner was surprised into a coughing fit. She smiled serenely at him while he struggled. “Make it a good one.”
“I dare you to…” Their eyes locked. Tim could see the moment Conner second-guessed what he was going to say, and he stumbled on the recovery. “Uh, do your best magical girl transformation. A sincere one, no throwin’ it ‘cause you know you’ll suck at it,” he ended with a provocative grin.
“Ugh,” Cassie grumbled while she pushed herself upright. She put her hands on her hips and looked sternly down at Conner. Conner’s grin spread as he tipped his head back to look at her. “You get that Diana was blessed by the gods, right? Blessed. That’s not the same as just having powers. Not everyone can do what she does!”
“Excuses excuses,” Conner said.
Cassie pulled her elastic out of her hair and snapped it around her wrist. She took a fortifying breath and did what Tim guessed was supposed to be an arabesque. She did about 180 before she wobbled and went down. She hit the ground in a particularly hard sit. “Oof!”
“Ooh,” Conner said. “Whiffed it.”
“That was intentional!” Cassie huffed. She blew her hair out of her face. “When you’re falling you’re supposed to land on a butt cheek.”
“I think you’re not supposed to fall at all.”
Cassie pulled up a handful of grass and tossed it at him. It ineptly fluttered back down to the ground without reaching him. Cassie’s eyes narrowed, and Conner’s smirk grew.
“Artemis never got around to teaching me twirling,” Cassie groused. She folded one leg over the other, lifted the smarting cheek from the ground, and rubbed it. Conner’s gaze jumped down to her hand.
Tim felt that he was being outmaneuvered. “Seductress” was one of the absolute last words Tim would use to describe Cassie, who had a low-grade discomfort with that kind of femininity, but she approached Conner with absolute confidence that whatever move she made would be well-received. Tim supposed that Conner was the one responsible for that confidence.
He glanced sidelong at Conner to watch him watching Cassie, and nearly jumped when he saw Conner was watching him. Specifically he’d caught Tim looking at Cassie’s ass. There was a little furrow in Conner’s brow as he looked at him.
Tim’s ears wanted to go red. He dug into his composure training and envisioned ice water running through his veins to prevent it.
“Cassie, it’s your turn,” Tim said quickly. Likely too quickly.
Cassie tapped her chin. She smirked. “Conner.”
Conner’s focus was immediately pulled back to her. “Aw, come on! This is targeted.”
She kept smirking. “Truth or dare?”
“I’m not going on another fetch quest,” Conner said. “Truth.”
“Okay, cool guy. What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done? Bet it’s worse than falling on your ass.”
“You guys are the worst,” Conner said. “Being seen with you all is definitely the most embarrassing thing.”
“Bzzt,” Bart said. He could do a flawless buzzer impression. “No lying during ‘truth’ or you get a penalty.”
“Ugh, fine… When I was younger, I used to use my TTK to give myself secret hugs.”
He said it like he expected them all to start laughing.
No one started laughing.
Tim’s chest ached worse than any punch he’d ever taken. He immediately mentally tallied all the times that he had hugged Conner, only to be hit with the deadening thought that if he could remember them all then he hadn’t done it anywhere close to enough times.
As the moment stretched and the anticipated laughter didn’t materialize, Conner’s demeanor shifted from “braced for mockery” to a new nervousness. His eyes darted between their faces. “Ah… ha…?” Conner prompted uncertainly.
Tim lunged for him. So did Bart and Cassie. They both got there faster, and Tim’s arms ended up on the top of the pile as they all hugged Conner as hard as they possibly could. Conner grunted from the collision-turned squeeze.
Cassie had him around the neck and chest in a cross-body hug from behind. Bart had dived for his torso, and he was nearly face-planted in Conner’s lap for how low he’d landed; he grabbed his own elbows around Conner’s waist to double lock Conner in place. Tim had gotten in from the side. His arms were around Conner, but they were also around Cassie’s back and Bart’s nape.
For a moment, Conner seemed completely lost as to how to respond. Like he hadn’t even imagined that this would be all of theirs first response to hearing such a thing. Tim squeezed Conner as hard as his heart was squeezing.
“…I don’t do it anymore!” Conner insisted, and they all hugged him harder.
“You guys! I get plenty of hugs, okay. Ma is a hugger. It’s fine,” Conner insisted, almost violent in his rejection of comfort. “I wasn’t trying to make you all feel sorry for me.”
“We know you weren’t trying to do that,” Cassie said. Her lips just barely cleared the curve of his shoulder while her cheek pressed tight against it.
“Okay, so… stop it, then,” Conner said, looking some flustered version of “relieved.” “If you all are going to overreact like this, I’m not going to tell you any more of the bad stuff.”
Bart’s cheek squished against Conner’s abs as he gazed up at him. No one could do big eyes quite like Bart. “There’s more bad stuff?”
Conner’s relief swiftly vanished. Tim was close enough he could see the sweat gather on his brow. “Uh, that’s… it’s not… Ugh! Can’t you all be normal about me!”
“No,” Cassie and Bart said.
“Can’t be done,” Tim said.
“Look, it’s not—it wasn’t—I wasn’t a kid.”
“You literally went by Kid,” Bart said.
“I went by Superboy,” Conner said. “I was never a kid, okay. No couple ever fucked me into existence, I didn’t grow in a womb, I never had to suck a tit for food. I never needed coddling; I came out bulletproof!” Conner’s eyes flickered among them and then latched onto Bart. “Bart didn’t have a normal childhood, either. You all don’t have to treat me like it’s this special sad thing. Like, you were stuck in VR for years of your time, you wanna talk touch-deprived…”
Bart pressed his chin into Conner’s gut as he turned his face up at him. “You got turned loose by some rogue clones before Cadmus could finish conditioning you, and you would’ve gotten snatched back up by Luthor if Leech hadn’t immediately publicized and monetized your existence,” Bart said. “My grandmother rescued me and brought me back to the rest of my family to keep me safe, and most of them hugged me. Most of my high school friends did, too.”
“Uh,” Conner said.
“I also hugged them,” Bart said. “You could’ve asked me for one.”
Conner snorted and looked away, and jolted a little when he inadvertently locked eyes with Tim. He refocused over Tim’s shoulder. “C’mon, there’s no way I could’ve done that. Asking for a hug is so lame.”
“Yeah. You’re not lame. You’ve always been a cool guy,” Cassie said. Conner’s tight shoulders relaxed marginally with the affirmation. “I always liked that about you. And I appreciate all the effort you put into being cool.”
Conner tightened up again. “That makes me sound like a try-hard, jeez. No one likes try-hard guys, they’re embarrassing.”
“I like when you’re embarrassed,” Bart said.
Conner rolled his eyes. “Sure, Bart,” he said with a sarcastic bite. “That makes me feel loads better.”
“I could’ve given you secret hugs. If you’d needed them to be secret,” Bart said.
Conner’s face started to glow. “Uh, that’s… That sounds… I didn’t need them to be secret, Bart, jeez. I didn’t need them at all! It was just a bad habit, like… like chewing on a hoodie string,” he said. “I grew out of it.”
Tim took note that the example Conner came up with for a “bad habit” was, like hugging one’s self, another typical self-soothing technique.
“Y’know,” Cassie said, with just a little bit of a nudge in her voice, and Tim immediately clocked how she was trying to steer Conner, “people like vulnerable guys, too. I wish you’d asked. I would’ve given you hugs.” She hadn’t been able to close her hands around the vertical expanse of Conner’s torso. Her splayed fingers squeezed a little tighter into the muscle beneath them. “That would’ve made me feel pretty special, if you’d done that for me.”
“…No one wants to have to ask for a hug,” Conner muttered, which was the least deflecting way he’d responded yet.
Cassie rested her chin on his shoulder with a regretful exhale. “I wish I’d been more frank then about how much I’d liked you.”
“Oh, c’mon, it was plenty obvious,” Conner said and paled the moment the words were out of his mouth. “I-I-I mean, I just mean you didn’t do anything wrong!” he clarified, panicky, although Cassie hadn’t reacted with offense to the comment. “And I was shitty when I was sixteen—“
“No, you weren’t,” Tim said.
Conner scoffed. “Altered realities are bad enough; let’s not start getting into revisionist history. You definitely thought I was shitty,” he said.
“Maybe I should’ve tried hugging it out of you,” Tim said.
Tim could see the blush grow on Conner’s cheeks. He still wasn’t looking Tim in the eye. "C’mon, that’s… If you’d offered, I would’ve thought you were making fun of me. I probably would’ve been a dick about it.”
“It’s not your job to make us feel better,” Bart said.
Conner blinked down at him in confusion. “What?”
“You turned us trying to comfort you into you reassuring us real fast. You’re saying, oh, you didn’t have it as bad as me. You didn’t deserve any better from Cassie. You wouldn’t have appreciated Tim if he’d tried. When we’re sad for you, we don’t expect you to make us feel better about it. And you minimizing and belittling yourself wouldn’t be the way to do it, anyway.”
Conner blinked at Bart for an extended moment, so stunned that his mouth was even hanging open. “I liked you better before you swallowed a library,” Conner finally said, thick.
Bart stared straight into his eyes. “You’ve never liked me more than you do now,” he said. “I went back for you when you got left behind.”
Tim felt Conner’s breath hitch under all of their arms. He turned his face the other way, so that he was staring past Cassie’s cheek. His throat bobbed.
“The smoke is gettin’ in my eyes,” he said, his voice clogged.
Cassie slipped her arms out from under Tim’s, sat up on her knees, threw her arms around Conner’s head, and pulled him into her sternum.
Tim felt the tension in Conner balloon and then all rush out of him once his face was covered.
Oh, Tim thought. Tim typically thought a whole slew of thoughts all at once, but right then it was just, oh.
Cassie rested her chin on the top of Conner’s head and held him tight. Bart inched higher up Conner’s torso, under Tim’s arm, into the space that she’d vacated. He had to slide his grip from his elbows to his wrists as he went from encircling Conner’s waist to his ribs.
All this time, Conner’s hands had been flat against the ground, resting where he’d braced himself during their initial tackle. He hadn’t tried to hug them back. Conner had impressive arms. He could have encircled the three of them if they were smooshed together in front of him, but he couldn’t reach them all when he was stuck in the middle and they were glommed on to him from all angles.
But nothing in Conner’s vicinity was actually out of his reach.
“Would you show us?” Tim asked.
“Uh, what d’ya mean?” Conner mumbled from behind Cassie’s stacked arms.
“I’d like to know what one of these TTK hugs feels like. Could you do it to us?”
When Tim was younger and relied more on pretense, he would have tacked on something about it being a mere “curiosity.” But Cassie wasn’t the only one who wished she’d been more explicit about liking Conner when they were young. So many of his and Conner’s earliest interactions had been so aggressively charged, for no reason other than being a fourteen-year-old boy and saying to another teen boy, “I like you, I want you to like me, please be my friend” was an inconceivable ask.
He agreed with Bart and Cassie; he also wished Conner had asked for what he needed. But Cassie was a girl, and Bart had been raised by 31st-century digital wolves. Neither of them really intuitively grasped the boyish aversion to acknowledging an emotional need. Tim hadn’t been designed by narcissistic scientists to be a man-shaped weapon, but he’d had two emotionally unavailable fathers. Tim understood how Conner could’ve thought that he couldn’t.
The nice thing about growing up was doing the things that seemed impossible when he was young. Almost everybody learned by example. He couldn’t ask Conner to make a leap he wasn’t willing to make himself. “I’d like a hug.”
Conner hesitated. “Bart hates getting restrained—“
“A hug isn’t a restraint,” Bart said. “I want one.”
“Me, too,” Cassie said. She gave Tim an approving look over Conner’s head.
“…Alright.”
It wasn’t curiosity, but to be honest, Tim was curious. He wanted to see what shape a hug would take when it wasn’t made from a pair of arms.
He could feel Conner’s TTK gather on his skin, sort of like how humid air could be felt but without the associated discomfort. It felt like there was weight to it, but not one that pulled down toward the earth. It settled around his torso and arms like an intangible shirt, and then it pulled tight.
It was all the pressure of a good, strong hug, but distributed over a much larger area than a pair of arms could manage. It felt more like being squeezed in the palm of a giant hand.
It was nice. It was a wholly unique sensory experience and somehow still soothing. Tim leaned into it; Cassie and Bart did as well, and all of them were adhered together a little more securely. Tim wondered idly if this were how covalent bonds felt. Conner’s breathing steadied out underneath Tim’s arms. Tim could feel the anxious flutter of his heart turn peaceful.
Tim’s knees were starting to really feel the litter of the forest floor beneath them. Tim could stay perfectly still in a crouch for a very long time. He was used to doing it in protective knee pads. But for Conner, he wouldn’t move for anything.
“Conner,” Bart broke the moment of silence. “It’s your turn. Ask me for a truth,” he prompted.
Tim glanced sidelong at Bart, trying to discern where he was going with this. Conner’s forehead was mostly hidden behind Cassie’s forearm, but Tim saw the very top of it wrinkle in questioning. “Uh, you still want to play?”
“You had to tell a truth. It’s only fair,” Bart said.
“…Okay, give me a truth.”
Bart didn’t have to pause to think of one—at least, not long enough for any of them to clock it. “I’m a multiverse outlaw. I’ve got a wanted poster.”
“What, for real?” Conner asked.
“Yeah, I’m a reality bandit. I’m wanted for time crimes,” Bart said.
“…How’s that comparable to what I said? That’s not embarrassing at all, that’s rad as hell.”
“Mm, yeah. I guess bragging isn’t a truth,” Bart said. Conner snorted softly. After a pause, Bart said, “I don’t think my dad’s ever going to be born,” and the night got a little stiller. “Grandma and Grandpa’re really draggin’ their feet. And I got unstuck from causality by skipping around the time stream so much. Even if they ever do have kids, my dad wouldn’t be, like… my dad.”
Conner’s throat bobbed. “I’m sorry you lost that.”
“Yeah,” Bart agreed. “But I’m not sorry. I picked you.”
Conner hugged Bart harder, which made him hug all of them harder. Tim felt the TTK cinch around him as Bart was hauled in tighter. A hug wasn’t a restraint, but Tim was genuinely surprised Bart was sitting this still for this long.
Although Tim wasn’t moving off his knees, either.
“Cassie,” Bart said. “You share a truth now.”
“Hmm. Something embarrassing, huh?” Cassie gazed down at the crown of Conner’s head that she held squeezed against her chest. “I mean, that’s tough. You know most of my embarrassing things already ‘cause I did most of them to get you to pay attention to me. Like, the Kents catching me in nothing but your t-shirt? Embarrassing.”
Tim’s eyebrows raised. Cassie smirked, but even now, it had a twinge of embarrassment to it.
“Oh! You don’t know this,” Cassie said. “When you took your pants off, I kept thinking ‘ohmygodohmygodohmygod,’ then I started worrying I was gonna accidentally invoke one of the pantheon and they’d manifest and ruin the mood.”
“You were thinking that much? Guess I was doing something wrong,” Conner tried to joke.
“No,” Cassie said matter-of-factly. “You did everything right. You were so good to me.”
Tim could feel the heat rise in Conner’s body. Tim felt a little flushed himself. He’d easily deduced that Cassie and Conner had slept together. But picking it up via context clues was different than Cassie intentionally letting Tim and Bart into the intimacy that she and Conner had shared.
“I liked my first time,” Cassie said. “You made me feel safe.”
“Good,” Conner’s voice cracked a little.
“How did I make you feel?”
Conner’s rosy bottom lip sagged slightly. “What?”
“How did I make you feel?” Cassie repeated.
“That’s not, uh. Good. You were really good, Cassie.”
“Thanks,” Cassie said. “How did I make you feel?”
Conner seemed to be struck dumb. He struggled for a moment; Tim felt his TTK shiver where it wrapped around him, and it reverberated all the way down to Tim’s sinew. But Conner didn’t snatch his TTK back, or duck out from under their arms, or beg off. He swallowed and said, “Special.”
“Good,” Cassie said, and hugged his head a little tighter. Tim felt Conner shiver in his bones. “Y’know, when I see the ‘S,’ I always think of you first.”
Conner had nothing to say to that. Cassie locked eyes with Tim and prompted, “Tim, you’ve gotta share one now.”
“I used to have a crush on Ted Kord,” Tim said.
Conner sputtered out a surprised laugh. “What?”
“Is that not an embarrassing enough truth?” Tim asked, and he earned a more robust laugh for it.
“You’ve got weird taste in guys, dude,” Conner said, sounding nothing but affectionate.
“Disagree,” Tim said. He gazed at all of Conner that was visible: his plush mouth, his stubble, the sharp points his jawbone made, the strong column of his neck, the soft-looking throat that bobbed when he swallowed, and the dip of the suprasternal notch, almost hidden below the collar of Conner’s shirt. Tim was aware that he was gazing a lot, and that Conner could, conceivably, see him do it. But he didn’t believe Conner was peering out through Cassie’s arms.
Of course, that didn’t mean that Tim wasn’t still being observed. His eyes flickered up from the hollow of Conner’s throat to Cassie, who was giving him a knowing look… and to Bart, who was also giving him a knowing look. Whenever Bart figured something out, Tim could almost literally see the lightbulb above his head. So clearly this wasn’t news to Bart.
…Well, that was a little embarrassing. Cassie was one thing, but it wasn’t like he was trying to be obvious. He used to be good at hiding things. Tim felt compelled to prove it and throw out something that would actually surprise Bart.
“I also had a little crush on Bart when he was aged up.”
Conner whipped his head around, which broke him out of Cassie’s hold. “What?” He fixed Tim with a wide-eyed stare.
That was a much bigger reaction from Conner than Tim had expected. He wanted to analyze what that meant—which was hard to do when it was filtering through layers and layers of wishful thinking.
It was also magnitudes bigger than Bart’s reaction. He just looked at Tim and said, “When I was all old and emotionally unavailable and condescending? You’ve got issues, Tim.”
Tim couldn’t really argue with that.
“‘Old’ is stretching it,” Cassie said. Her hands resettled on Conner’s shoulders, both of her thumbs laying over a knob high on his spine. “You’re nearly that old again now,” she pointed out.
“I’m pretty sure I can be however old I want to be,” Bart said.
“And you’ve settled on this?” Tim clarified.
It had truly been the minorest of crushes, more about Bart suddenly being an adult in his orbit after his dad’s death than about Bart being Bart, and yes Bart had a point about him having issues, especially then, buuut…
Mid-twenties Bart was a good-looking guy, was all Tim had to say about it.
He pretended to be unconcerned with how deeply Conner was scrutinizing him.
Bart shrugged. “I figure I’ll just keep pace with Kon. You know, if his aging stalls out again.”
Conner blinked. It looked like it took a moment for Bart’s meaning to sink in, and then when it did, it walloped him. Conner’s eyes reddened and his eyes got wetter—but though he rapidly blinked, no tears fell. His eyelashes didn’t even clump. Tim reflected that it was probably well within TTK’s capabilities to hold tears in.
Conner loudly cleared his throat, and the TTK hold abruptly snapped. It left Tim feeling oddly floaty; the bonds of gravity had nothing on TTK tethers. “We should get off the ground, yeah? Tim’s knees must be killing him,” Conner said, using Tim as an excuse to disengage. He lightly shook Tim and Cassie off (Bart was clinging on harder).
It was something of a miracle that Conner hadn’t fled earlier. Conner was uncomfortable receiving so much care at once. He was particularly nervous about free affection—or “unearned” affection. He’d been more receptive to it when Cassie’d had him folded up in her arms, but now he was looking for a way out.
Tim wished that he could just barrel past that discomfort and get Conner to the place where he accepted it.
“I’m fine,” Tim tried to push back. He’d do worse than sore knees for him; hell, sore knees could be fun.
But Conner scoffed. “I can feel how stiff your knees are.”
That was… interesting. Because Tim had only felt Conner’s TTK on his upper half.
Tim had never really studied Conner’s TTK. He would have liked to say that he had enough tact not to treat Conner like a lab project, but truthfully, that had only occurred to him later. Initially, he hadn’t asked Conner questions about it because Conner wouldn’t shut up about how great TTK was, and he hadn’t wanted to encourage his braggadocio.
With all that he knew now, Tim was pretty sure that Conner wouldn’t have boasted so much if there’d been someone telling him he was great.
Tim’s lack of information about how it worked had made trying to replicate it an exercise in futility. Tim had generally conceptualized it like an external somatic system that Conner could toss around. He’d thought that when he came into contact with it, he and Conner could both feel it, like shaking someone’s hand.
If Conner could touch people without letting them touch him, well… that was interesting. And potentially devastating.
“Okay. It is pretty late,” Cassie said, and Tim was surprised she’d thrown in the “comfort Conner” towel so quickly until she said, “Let’s all sleep together.”
“Uh—um?” Conner said, but Cassie didn’t respond to the unarticulated question. Instead, she turned to Bart and said, “Can you make one massive sleeping bag?”
Bart finally released Conner and hopped upright. “Totally,” he said. He was already inside their tent by the time the sound had hit Tim’s ears, all of their sleeping bags unrolled and unzipped, and Bart in the middle of figuring out how to rezip them all together into a single bag.
“Uh…” Conner drew his knees up now that Bart was no longer sprawled across his lap and rested his elbows on them, his spine curling slightly inward in the process. He glanced between Tim and Cassie. “You wanna… cuddle?”
“Yeah,” Cassie said plainly. “Tim’s right, it’s gonna get chilly sleeping on the ground, and you’re like the best possible space heater. It’ll be way more comfortable with you warming up the bag for everyone. Would you do that for us?”
Conner sat taller. “Sure. No prob.”
“We were going to be squashed together pretty close, anyway,” Tim remarked.
“Yeah,” Cassie agreed again, and gave Tim an “I know what you did” look. “An eight by seven? What were you thinking?”
“It’s a four-person tent,” Tim said.
“The makers weren’t anticipating one of those four would be Superboy-sized,” Cassie said, and Conner preened under the implicit compliment to his physique. The last of his lingering uncertainty seemed to be forgotten.
Tim was absolutely cataloguing everything that Cassie did that worked on Conner. How she reframed things. How she redirected things. It was aspirational. Once upon a time, she’d been in the position that he was in, with a massive crush and stupefied over how to proceed. And now she could deftly unpretzel Conner by suggesting he was doing them a favor by letting them all cuddle him.
Tim didn’t say anything more about the tent. Truthfully he could have anticipated that Conner exceeded the average “single person” floor space and bought something larger… but it was a four-person tent. That was Tim’s story, and he was sticking to it.
“Done!” Bart announced. He batted the nylon tent door out of the way and gestured to the composite sleeping bag that took up nearly the entire tent floor. “One of the built-in pillows ended up in the foot to make it work,” Bart explained. “Kon, I’m gonna use you as a pillow.”
Conner cleared his throat. “Sure. Cool. Whatever.”
Cassie used Conner’s shoulder to brace herself as she pushed upright. She dusted off her jeggings and headed for the tent. “Put the fire out, would you?” she asked over her shoulder, and Conner leaned forward to smother it with his bare hands.
The dark was dark this far away from the rest of the world. Tim had never before appreciated how bright night was in Gotham. But he was also used to navigating cave systems and he had excellent spatial awareness, so he didn’t trip on his way to the tent. He toed his shoes off and slid in, maneuvering around the moving outlines that Bart and Cassie made.
Conner was right behind him. He clicked his tongue. “Don’t leave your shoes out here, man, they’ll be full of slugs in the morning.”
Tim applied what he’d learned and said, “Get them for me.”
Conner laid them just inside the tent door and zipped it shut.
Near-total blackness provided near-total privacy for undressing. The tent blocked out even the distant starlight; the only light source came from staticky bursts across the patchwork sleeping bag’s fabric, generated by Bart’s movements.
How much light did Kryptonian eyes need to see? Not much, Tim wagered.
The dark space was filled with the rustle of clothing, clink of belts, pull of zippers, and snap of elastic bands. Tim’s fingers found all of the creases of Conner’s jacket, and he carefully and crisply folded it sight unseen. He thought Alfred would have been proud.
Bart’s flurry of movement increased, and he blew out a loud, irritable breath. “The opening’s here, Bart,” Conner said; Tim couldn’t confirm this, but he was almost positive that Conner took Bart’s hand and put it on it. Bart yanked the sleeping bag with a soft “a-ha!”, pulling the seat out from under Tim and tipping him into the tent wall. By the time Tim had righted himself and climbed into the bag as well, Bart and Cassie had already bogarted both of Conner’s sides, and Tim was stuck with the far side of the bag.
That figured. Tim maintained his composure, still mindful of how much more Conner could see. He turned in toward their pile of bodies, his knees brushing the back of Cassie’s as he did. His shoulder compressed the mat between their bag and the forest floor. He could feel the cold trying to seep in from the outside, but being under the covers with Conner was as warm as a sunny day.
Tim reached across Cassie’s waist, and his hand found the flat expanse just below Conner’s ribcage. It rose when Conner sucked in a breath, and then made a controlled descent. Conner grasped Tim, halfway between holding his hand and holding his wrist, and Tim didn’t let himself startle, but his heart jumped hard enough to bring it back to life. With Conner’s thumb on his pulse, he may as well have startled.
…No. Tim’s instincts nagged at him, and in a minute, he’d worked out why. Not Conner's thumb. With the way that Conner’s arms had to be positioned, it wasn’t possible that he had a hand free to hold Tim’s. They were both preoccupied with Bart and Cassie. Conner had run out of hands.
So… he’d made another one for Tim.
Conner’s TTK hand ran up Tim’s arm, wrapped around his shoulders, and pulled him more firmly into the pile.
Tim closed his eyes. It wasn’t much different from having them open. He let the steady pressure and the rhythm of Conner’s breathing lull him to sleep.