Snippet Nine from Outer Space
or, Yes, I did adopt this naming convention just to get to a lame punchline that would be funny only to me.
notpoetry requested Kon/Bart. (or Wally/Bart, but that broke my brain too much.)
This is set in the Titans future of eeeevil. Nothing graphic.
Conner knows how to handle Batman. You do what he tells you to. The others think they have some kind of close relationship, but basically Batman appreciates people he can count on to do what needs doing, (do what his plans require,) without wasting time asking for clarification or making stupid suggestions. Then he'll just have to explain to you why they're stupid. Tim hates wasting time. He's always been like that, really.
Bart, though. Conner can tell he's missing the way they were as kids. Nostalgia. Bart doesn't understand. He tries to get Conner to talk about it, sometimes.
"Remember when Tim dressed up in that weird pimp costume, so that he could watch out for Greta?"
"Who?"
"Greta! Suzie! Secret!"
"Pimp costume?"
"Never mind."
Or when they had to be pretty rough persuading Lois to stop making the people angry. Bart got a little emotional over that one, too.
Bart fizzbuzzes (it does make a sound, even though he's the only one who can hear it,) through the wall of his room one night.
"Conner?"
"Something on your mind?" Bart's always been a talker, and Conner has never minded, although he hasn't felt like he's been saying the right thing in response for a while.
Bart walks on the walls around the room. Or, not actually. He's really running in circles so that the centrifugal force allows him to ignore gravity, but he's got the trick of synching his speed to the eye so that you only register him once per circuit, an eighth of an inch advanced each time. It's pretty cool.
"Do you remember," (a lot of Bart's conversations have been starting this way,) "when we were young, and dumb, and thought we were going to be able to always do the right thing?" The problem with Bart's wall walking trick is that his voice seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at all, which sometimes makes Conner feel a bit like Bart's a hologram or something.
Conner's not sure what to say to that, but it doesn't matter, because Bart keeps on talking.
"Do you remember when we all thought Robin was never going to make a mistake? He was like… He never messed up, you know?"
Conner's a little worried by that. It sounds as if Bart's doubting- But not Bart. He would never- Bart knows how Tim would react, if…"He… What are you saying? Has Batman…"
"We were going to be able to… I don't know. Make something that people would… Something heroic. Show them how it was done. Be heroes." Bart's lost the rhythm, and now it's a bit like a stop motion camera, abruptly jumping instead of a smooth walk.
"Bart, we- "
"We believed in us. Together. Con-" Suddenly Bart isn't pacing the walls, he's standing right in front of Conner. "I never thought you were any less a hero than Clark, you know?" He looks into Conner's eyes, as if he's trying to see something there. And then he shutterstops forward a step and kisses Conner, putting the concentration into it that's necessary for him to slow down, so it actually lasts a full second.
Conner exhales in relief. "God, Bart. You don't have to… If you wanted to, you could have just said so, instead of making me think… " He puts his arms around Bart and tries to pet some of the speed out of him, slow him down so it'll be fun for both of them.
Bart closes his eyes and seems to lose some of the tension, but his mouth doesn't smooth out until Conner softens it with a kiss that he knows is as hard as Bart needs. "C'mon Bart, you know I'm here for you if you need me, right?"
"Yeah," says Bart, sighing. "Yeah, I know."
Author's over-explainy note: If you love me, skip this part! I noticed that the future Titans of eeeevil always call Kon Conner. But in the same issue, Cassie calls not-evil Kon Conner as well, so I wasn't sure if they meant anything by it. But I decided to decide that they did. So when Kon hears "Con-" Bart's saying, "Kon." Clear?