Fic: Deja Vu All Over Again, Teen Titans, Tim/Kon, PG, 1/1
Kon gets a crazy new power he can’t quite figure out. Then when he does, he discovers so many new things about his friends that he likes it. But Kon is still oblivious to one very important thing…
Déjà Vu All Over Again
The first time that Kon started thinking that things were getting weird, was when he saw that Bart had actually left some of the brownies on the plate in the kitchen. He distinctly recalled Bart eating the last five of them as part of his after-lunch snack that day.
But, whatever. Triple fudge chocolate chip brownies. Mmm. He was so glad that ‘Rachel’ was taking Home Ec. Then again, there was no reason for her to take Shop when Cyborg could teach her anything and everything about mechanics.
Kon got caught mid-chew when Bart paused his game of Grand Theft Auto, ran into the kitchen, and snatched the other three brownies left, before proceeding to add in half a box of leftover pizza, a bag of Funyuns, and half a dozen pears.
Kon blinked in the wake Bart left behind, brow furrowing in confusion as he swallowed his mouthful of chocolatey goodness. Hadn’t Bart had the exact same thing a few hours ago, consuming all that food as the rest of his after-lunch snack?
Kon reflexively checked the clock before heading after Bart. He stopped in the doorway of the kitchen and did a double-take, rechecking the time. The clock read 1:13. That was about the same time that Bart had gotten his after-lunch snack before; as far as Kon remembered, it should have been several hours later by then.
Kon sighed, shrugged, and resolved that if he lost anymore time, he’d tell Robin what was going on.
***
The next thing that went weird was the next weekend, when Kon sparred with Cassie. She used exactly the same moves that she had when they’d sparred that morning, and halfway through actually kicking her ass, Kon realized that it had all actually happened before. Or something.
It was like he remembered it happening, but none of it actually had…yet.
Kon was so thrown by that idea that maybe he could see the future, that Cassie ended up pinning him anyway. “You okay?” she asked, and he must have looked as weirded out as he felt.
But that was what had happened before - as Kon remembered it - so Kon didn’t stress too much. “Yeah,” he said, and gave a weak grin as he rose to his feet.
Cassie shrugged and gave him that little amused smirk of ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ and they started sparring again.
He would have gone to talk to Robin, but he really needed more information.
***
Over the next couple of weeks, crazy things kept happening, most of them twice. Kon got really good at pretending that he’d just had a hunch, and wasn’t actually anticipating anything that had already happened - to him. He kept track of all of his premonitions - Kon called them ‘visions’ for lack of a better word - in a notebook. He noticed that nearly all of his visions seemed to be of things less than a day in the future, and most of them lasted no more than twenty minutes. They also never seemed to happen when he was busy, only when he was idle or bored.
At least he didn’t have to worry about spacing out in the midst of battle or a test at school or talking to Robin.
When he walked into the Fortress of Solitude and saw Clark kissing Batman - who looked suspiciously like Green Arrow, only with dark hair and no beard - Kon felt his brain break. He flew back to the farm and hid in the attic for the rest of the day, trying to stave off the thoughts of bad bad wrong, and also a pounding headache.
Then Lois called that night to talk to Aunt Martha, wanting to know if her husband was back from that mission in Tanzania, and if he’d stopped by the farm like he said he would, and Kon crept out of his hiding place. A little sleuthing - well, asking the Fortress’ AI - proved that Superman had been nowhere near the Fortress that day.
The next day, Kon was understandably hesitant when flying towards the Fortress. Superman wasn’t there, though, and neither was Batman.
It was the first time Kon had seen something that hadn’t happened. It was also the first time he’d ever gotten a stress headache when his powers were working, and Kon wasn’t stupid. He could see the correlation. If he saw something that didn’t happen, he’d get a headache with the ‘vision.’
He’d actually have to have it happen more than once to have proof, though. And convince himself that Superman and Batman weren’t having an affair. Because ewww.
***
Kon was on the lookout from then on, making sure that the ‘false’ visions were really false.
After that whole mess with Doctor Light, most of the former Titans, and the Outsiders had come back to the Tower to regroup and tend to their wounds. While most of the others were busy in the infirmary, Kon had talked with Grace, who didn’t seem to mind the fact that his eyes kept straying to her breasts - they were right in front of him; he’d never been so glad that a woman was taller than him since Starfire - and was willing to dish dirt about Nightwing and Arsenal.
“When they aren’t arguing like an old married couple, they’re more like an erotic Butch and Sundance,” she said, then grinned, teeth sharp like knives as she delivered the zinger, “what with all the sexual tension that’s burning between them.”
Kon blushed and stuttered his way through the next five minutes of conversation before quickly making his way out of it. Butch and Sundance? Sexual tension? Whatever. He didn’t see it, but then, Nightwing was being a bitch, and Roy was sleeping with Grace. Dude, the guy was so lucky; she was seriously hot.
It had to have been more than sexual tension if Arsenal really did want Nightwing when he was tapping a piece like that.
Then, when trying to avoid Captain Marvel Junior - currently going by CM3 - who was also flirting with Cassie, who actually seemed receptive to it, Kon walked in on Arsenal and Nightwing making out in the kitchen. He sped out of there, knocking Cassie into CM3’s arms and giving Bart a - heh - run for his money.
By the time he made it out to Kory’s garden, Kon realized he had a headache. It was pretty bad, too, but he forced himself back to the Tower. He saw Tim just exiting the infirmary after getting a gash on his leg sewn up, which had happened about fifteen minutes before he’d struck up his conversation with Grace, so he went off to start it up again.
This time, after he escaped Grace’s clutches and sidestepped CM3, when he entered the kitchen, Kon found Nightwing and Arsenal involved with each other - but in an argument, not excavating each other’s tonsils.
Kon breathed a sigh of relief, and resolved to go talk to Robin about his new ability. He found Tim in his room - most likely trying to avoid the invading heroes on their turf - and said, “Hey, man.”
The grin he got in reply wasn’t that big - unless one took into account that it was Robin smiling. “Hey, Kon. What’s up?”
Kon shifted uncomfortably. “Uh…well, I kinda needed to talk to you about something.”
“Oh? Me too…” It was a bit of shock to have Robin suddenly kiss him, even if it was just a peck on the cheek. “Thanks for having my back today,” he said with a smile.
It was a shock, but not so surprising that Kon didn’t notice his headache hadn’t gone away. Twice in one day? That had never happened before.
Maybe he needed to do some more research.
After getting back from Kory’s garden for real, Kon decided not to go talk to Robin, and instead holed himself up in his room. He spent the rest of the day, and all his spare time that weekend looking up stuff online. Prophetic visions and such, but aside from a hundred different variations on the Psychic Friends’ Hotline theme, a few pages on Deathstroke or Hourman, and some New Age crap about destiny and fate, Kon didn’t find anything.
He thought maybe he could talk to Raven about it, but Raven’s powers were the result of her father being a capital D Demon, so…that probably wouldn’t help. Maybe his new power was some throwback Kryptonian thing. Kon thought he might head up to the Fortress whichever day that week he didn’t get detention and ask the AI.
On Wednesday, his new power seemed to try to make up for the brain-breaking weekend it had given him by offering a ninety-percent complete glimpse of his History test on Friday. Kon spent Thursday studying his butt off on the questions he managed to remember and pulled in a respectable B+. It was probably technically cheating, but Kon didn’t do it on purpose, and what was he supposed to do: fail, just to be fair? No way. Besides, he had studied.
But Kon’s nagging sense of guilt dogged him, and when Raven cornered him the next Friday after dinner, it spiked.
“You’ve been feeling a bit…out of sorts lately, Superboy,” Raven said, eyes wide and knowing beneath her hood.
Kon shrugged, and tried to appear like a normal teenaged boy with normal teenage worries - inasmuch as ‘normal’ applied to a superhero who’d been cloned from the world’s greatest hero and the world’s biggest villain. “I’ve just got some stuff on my mind,” he said, which was entirely true, if a bit vague. He was suddenly reminded of the other reason he hadn’t gone to Raven with his problem - she could be seriously creepy.
Raven arched a brow at him. “You know, you can always talk to us. We’re your friends.”
Kon smiled at her, because he knew that talking about feelings wasn’t any easier for her than it was for him, though probably not as hard as it was for Robin. “Yeah, I know. This is just stuff I need to work out on my own.” Actually, he probably did need to get some help figuring it out, but at the moment, his future-seeing powers didn’t seem to be harmful, so it was probably not the worst thing he could have done.
“If you’re sure…” Raven said as she glided away.
Kon wasn’t, so he skipped his last class on Monday and headed up to the Fortress.
The AI made little R2D2 beeping noises as it examined Kon with a tingly-feeling blue light, spent an hour quizzing him over what he knew (which wasn’t much) copied his notes in the time it took Kon to blink - and ultimately said that it needed time to go over all the available data.
Kon headed home in a dejected funk, sulking just underneath the puffy white clouds instead of soaring over them.
***
The next Friday dawned gray and misty; the afternoon sunlight burned off the dew on the grass by lunchtime, and when Kon headed off to San Francisco, he didn’t have to worry about getting struck my lightning in the midst of a thunderstorm.
Not that he was worrying about that; he was worrying about what the AI might have figured out. His new ‘power’ was kinda cool, but he couldn’t really control it. And unlike his X-Ray vision, he didn’t even know if it was possible to control it.
Kon had noticed, however, that he hadn’t had any new ‘visions’ in over a week. That was a streak that ended at around four o’clock, scant minutes after he arrived at Titans’ Tower.
It was another ‘fake’ vision, heralded by a headache, as usual, and Bart, as unusual. He was a bright gold blur, zooming around the lower levels of the Tower and chattering only just slow enough for people to perceive his words. Apparently his friend Carol had come back for a visit from the future, and would everyone mind terribly if he took the weekend off so he could spend it with her because they didn’t have any idea when she’d have to go back?
No one did, of course. Not like it mattered, though, since it hadn’t really happened. In reality, when Bart showed up that weekend, a few minutes late as per usual, he looked rather despondent. Kon cajoled him into talking with some of Ma Kent’s triple chocolate fudge brownies that he’d been hoarding, and it came out that that Sunday was, apparently, Carol’s birthday.
And he was missing her.
“I just…” Bart kicked his legs against the side of Kon’s bed. “I wish she hadn’t had to leave. And I feel kinda selfish, ‘cause when my Mom came back from the future the first time, I left with her, and I was gonna stay with her, for, like, forever, and I didn’t even think about the friends I’d leave behind that I’d miss. Or that’d miss me.”
Kon cast about for something to say, and finally settled on, “Well, you didn’t think much back then.” Which sounded kinda harsh, so he added, “And you do now. You’re…growing up.” And he was. But along with growing up came growing pains.
Sighing, Bart flopped back on the bed, head just missing one of the displaced pillows. “Yeah, and it sucks.”
Kon had to agree.
***
What also sucked was having no idea whether he was in a relationship or not. Things between him and Cassie had been left up in the air when Young Justice disbanded, and when the Teen Titans started up, Cassie had been so angry. Tim had been even more closed off than Kon had ever seen him, and he had…not reacted well to either of those things.
He’d gotten better, however, and so had they. Kon was glad. He didn’t really have any opportunities for socialization outside of the team. He hadn’t made any friends at Smallville High, and if he spent one more minute helping Pa out around the farm than he had to, he thought he was going to go crazy.
If the visions didn’t get there first.
Then he almost did go crazy, because Tim didn’t show up the next weekend. Tim was his safety-net, his go-to guy for all his problems, and his bestest bud in the whole wide weird world. And he hadn’t heard word one about Tim planning to ditch the Titans.
So Kon went to track him down, in Gotham, and he found…her. An admittedly pretty and busty blonde chick in a skirted Robin uniform. Apparently Tim had quit being Robin, and his girlfriend - his ex-girlfriend, Kon was vindictively pleased to note - had taken his place.
Kon wanted Tim to come back to the Titans. He needed Tim to come back. He couldn’t deal with his new power without the thought that Robin would be there to help him, like he always was.
That night, after an hour of trying to sleep and failing, Kon purposely tried to make a vision happen. He gave himself a stomachache, but he saw himself flying with Robin on a line beside him. When he left for home on Sunday evening without Tim having shown up, he had no idea how far in the future his vision was.
***
A little over two months, it turned out. Tim did come back to the Titans; only, when it finally happened, his ex-girlfriend had died, and so Kon didn’t feel like he could dump his problems on him for the foreseeable future.
‘The foreseeable future’ turned out to be the thirtieth century. Kon got sucked into the future, and came back, all in the same day, but not really, and in all that time with Legion he still hadn’t figured out what to do about his strange new power. It was so weird; so much time had passed for him, but Cassie was still upset over their interrupted date and Tim was still in deep mourning when Kon got back.
Then they met up with their evil, creepy future counterparts, and Kon spent more time fighting for his life and trying to outwit his Luthor genes and keep both Cassie and Tim calm than he could devote to trying to solve his problem.
Though, one good thing came out of the whole messed up, mixed up situation. Considering that their one and only real date - which Kon had been going to try and turn into a non-date - had ended before it could even really start, Cassie had seen that weren’t really together anymore, if they ever had been to begin with. At least, she hadn’t been pressing him to hang out with her lately.
She also didn’t touch him as much, and if Kon missed it, well, then he could just go find Tim. He’d apparently discovered the idea of healing through touch, and in the wake of his recent badness, was letting people hug him whenever they wanted.
Well…at least he was letting Kon.
It was a very small thing, but it seemed to make Tim feel better, and it made Kon feel like he was helping.
He wished he could have helped more, but all of his visions seemed to directly involve himself; something he’d seen, or would see. And he couldn’t very well shadow Tim and everyone else just to make sure he saw the bad stuff coming before it happened so he could stop it.
Being there for them would have to do.
“So, man, tell me what’s been goin’ on in Gotham.” Kon wrapped an arm around Tim’s waist and settled in for the duration; however long that might be.
Tim considered for a moment, and finally came up with an anecdote about Harley Quinn hooking up with Poison Ivy.
“For real?” Kon asked, faking a leer.
Tim snorted and shook his head. “No. Or at least, no one knows for sure. No one ever knows for sure. But…”
Turned out that instead of Joker Fish, Poison Ivy had wanted to make extra hardy Harlequin Plants. And boy, had that caused problems - but more of the annoying kind, and not the ‘Kill Kill Kill’ kind that Ivy had intended. Black and red jack-in-the-box daffodils that twined around people’s necks, only instead of strangling them, nuzzled them with their leaves.
Cute, sort of. Creepy, but cute.
Tim fell asleep in his arms that night, and Kon stayed with him, watching over his dreams. He awoke well-rested, and Tim…well, most of the lines of sadness were gone from Tim’s, the rising sun shone down on eyes clear of grief.
After that, Kon was in much better spirits - for a while, at least. Then something happened one night in Kory’s garden and her flowers started walking around, like those plants Tim had told him about. At first, it was kinda cute to see the flowers walking around, stems as bodies and roots as feet - if a little messy because of the latter. Cute, and not creepy, because they were alien plants, and fuzzy pink and green and blue, almost like really tall bunny rabbits.
Then the plants started growing - growing larger, and growing non-fuzzy tentacles. And San Francisco ended up looking like something out of Japanese hentai.
Tentacle porn was really not as hot as anime made it seem.
Oh. And Kon had a headache. Again.
Thank fuck, because otherwise? Well…exactly that, actually. No one had actually gotten molested before the vision ended, but it was a near thing. And Kon had absolutely no interest in getting it on with foliage that made Gar in octopus form look cuddly instead of slimy.
Kon shook his head free of the tangle of his thoughts, and skipped lunch to take a nap, because he so needed it.
***
Or…apparently not. He’d wanted to escape from his problems - well, problem, singular - but he’d just ended up dwelling on it for hours. Finally he decided to try and figure out what all his false visions had in common; maybe there was a link.
Twenty minutes later, Kon winced and groaned, burying his head in the pillows when he realized what he’d been missing. He may not have been as stupid as he (more than) occasionally acted, but he was most definitely the most oblivious person on the face of the Earth. Some of the visions were just based on random stuff, but others…
He’d thought of Nightwing getting together with Arsenal both because Grace kept talking about the sexual tension between them, and Tim was worried about Nightwing getting lonely. Plus, Lian Harper’s favorite uncle was Nightwing.
He’d thought about Bart’s friend Carol coming back from the future because Bart really missed her.
He’d thought about Kory’s flowers coming to life and running amuck molesting people with tentacles because Tim had mentioned that Poison Ivy had broken out of Arkham again. And sex had been on his mind at the time. He was a teenage (well, mostly) boy; when wasn’t sex on his mind?
He’d ‘envisioned’ thoughts of Batman and Superman getting together, because if that happened, then Batman couldn’t really say no to him getting together with Tim, right? Well, probably not, but Kon could hope.
And he’d thought about Tim flirting with him, and kissing him, because he liked Tim, and wanted to get together with him.
He had no idea where the thing about Tim telling him he was going to have a sex change operation because he was secretly a woman came from. Maybe the three pineapple pizzas he’d gorged himself on when watching cheesy monster movies with Bart. Yeah, he was definitely blaming it on that.
If only figuring out what he was going to do about his new feelings would turn out to be as easy as figuring out his new feelings had been.
Then again, that hadn’t been easy at all…
***
Neither was trying to find Tim when he (apparently) didn’t want to be found. Though why Tim would be avoiding him Kon didn’t know. He hadn’t seen anything in a vision; the only thing he’d gotten from the one he’d tried to force had been a vague flash of them kissing.
Which would have been cool, except that Kon didn’t know what happened after the kiss. Did Tim smack him, break his hand, and hate him forever? Did they smile goofily at each other before kissing again? Was Tim awkward and unsure, and did Kon try and say something reassuring and romantic and accidentally piss Tim off?
Kon didn’t know. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make any answers appear.
He couldn’t make Tim appear, either, and he still hadn’t found Tim by the time it was time to leave. He did make a quick stop by the Fortress on his way back to the farm, however. It’d been over three months; the AI should have figured things out, even if it hadn’t had the seven months in the future that he’d had.
The AI told him that his new psychic powers weren’t some nascent Kryptonian ability; apparently he’d been hit by a stray magic blast from Jinx in a battle with the Fearsome Five, and since magic was one of the few things that could affect him, it had. But it had been a stray blast, undirected, so it hadn’t hurt him, it had just given him this new temporary ability.
“Temporary?” Kon squawked, and then blushed, though he knew the AI didn’t care about the embarrassment of the lowly mortals it served. Kon had actually gotten kinda used to seeing the future. But then, he’d done just fine without it.
Knowing the bad stuff before it happened had come in handy, though.
“Yes,” the AI replied in its monotone ‘voice.’ “I estimate at the current rate of deterioration of magical energy in your body, your new psychic power will have completely disappeared in three weeks’ time.”
Three weeks. Kon shook his head. “Dude…”
***
Kon spent half that night focusing on ‘What happens next?’ He didn’t find out anything about Tim, but the experience did net him two very interesting visions, which he’d have to examine in more detail later.
He didn’t have anything but very weak flashes after that, feelings more than pictures, so Kon thought of those two vision as some sort of ‘parting gift’ from his power.
It was his own intuition, and knowledge of Robin’s habits, that lead to him staking out the stairwell from the roof on Saturday night. Tim opened the door, and came through, closing it behind him slowly and standing in place. To an outside observer (meaning someone who didn’t know him as well as Kon did) he would have looked to be pausing in thought.
Kon knew that in actuality, Tim was startled to find him there.
“Hey, man,” Kon said, and, knowing that otherwise he’d fidget, he shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Hey, Kon,” Tim replied, with the warmth in his voice that had been there since their first mission together. Even if the warmth had grown colder as the years had made Tim’s heart harder, Kon could still hear it, still feel.
He’d always felt. He wasn’t just the most oblivious person the planet, he was the most oblivious person in the entire fuckin’ galaxy. “Um, listen, Tim, I was wondering if we could talk?”
Robin’s assessing stare focused on him, and he nodded once. “Sure. Here or…?”
“My room?” Kon suggested, and tried not to think about how those words could mean something entirely different - if the circumstances were.
He tried for the entire two minutes it took them to get to his room, and was failing miserably by the time they reached the door.
Kon closed the door behind as he inched inside after Tim, whose cape was sweeping behind him like- well, like some really cool Matrix-y thing.
“So, what’s up?” Tim asked, nothing but open interest on his face.
Kon gulped, nerved himself to speak, steeled his heart for rejection, and opened his mouth, letting the planned words flow out. “It’s just…I’ve been doing some thinking lately and I realized something.”
“Realized what?” Tim’s brows knit in concern, and Kon almost faltered in his resolve.
“I, umm…” Kon fumbled for the next bit of his speech - and then realized that he hadn’t planned on speaking the next part. “It’ll probably be simpler if I show you,” he said, and using his TTK, reeled Tim in by his cape, laying a lip smackdown on him.
Tim’s shoulders tensed under his grip, and Kon fought the fear inside that screamed at him to let go and fly far, far away. Tim was surprised, and he needed to give Tim a fair chance to respond. He’d decided that a fair chance was thirty seconds.
It only took Kon five to lose count. He could never have predicted that Tim would be such an enthusiastic kisser. His lips, teeth and tongue were all involved, and they were throwing a party in Kon’s mouth.
Kon hoped that the party didn’t fizzle out anytime soon. It had to end eventually, but damn, it was the best kiss he’d had in…maybe not ever, but a damn long time.
When Tim finally pulled back, Kon was panting, despite not actually needing to breath. The kiss had just gotten his blood revved up.
The heated look in Tim’s eyes - even through the mask - did the rest. He was so gone on Tim it wasn’t even funny. “So…we’re cool?” Kon asked, the fingers of one hand carding through Tim’s hair. He wasn’t going to be a total girl and ask if Tim liked him, too. He just wasn’t.
Not right then, anyway.
Tim gave him that glimmer of a grin that Kon rarely ever saw anymore, and said, “Yeah, SB. We’re cool.” The grin widened. “Really cool.”
Kon grinned. As long as he and Tim were square, everything else was cake.
Though…he might need Rob’s help figuring out what to do about his last two visions, featuring some really bad stuff involving Lex Luthor and yet-another alternate dimension Superboy. That, of course, would come after the recriminations, which would come after him telling Tim about the past seven - or fourteen - or so months in which he’d been imitating the Great Karma, or whoever.
Before that, though, Kon planned to get in some quality makeout time with his new main squeeze. It was gonna be several months before the first of the bad visions happened; they had time to just be.