FIC "Tie the Knot"
Look, look, look, I have WRITTEN something! And, okay, yeah, it was supposed to be this tiny little drabblet-thing mostly as an excuse so I could brag about finally (finally! finally!) working on those sequels I've been putting off for two months (clark/bruce is coming. boostle is coming. tim/kon/cassie will probably come first).
And hey, the first month of procrastination was totally justified. First I broke the keyboard, then I broke the laptop I was borrowing from my sister, and then I broke my finger. (And okay, it was more of a strain/sprain thing and my sister's computer was due for a fixin' by the magical people at HP anyway but broke sounds funnier. Especially since I really, really broke the keyboard. I'm not kidding. I knocked over a half a cup of water on it, and then twenty minutes after mopping that up and using a hair dryer on the keyboard I knocked over the same cup AGAIN, and then an hour or so after that I dumped a cup of milk on it when I lost my balance. And then I decided to go back to bed).
Anyway. Because the later it gets in the morning, the more verbose I become (see above), my drabblet-thing turned into this 2200 word fic. Tim/Kon, massively fluffy, and not a raincloud of angst in sight.
Tie the Knot
Tim really had meant to bring this up in a better setting. Somewhere they could discuss things as calm, rational adults. But then Kon did that thing with his tongue and Tim’s shirt was long gone and his pants nearly followed before he managed to concentrate long enough to shove Kon off of him and sit up.
"I believe in sex before marriage!" Tim blurted out in a slightly more higher-pitched voice than usual. Then, as Kon's face brightened, he ran that sentence through his mind another time. "No wait, I meant, I believe in marriage before sex!"
The look on Kon's face now would have been comic gold if the topic were any less serious. "Um. Are you--are you saying you want to wait until you're married to have sex?"
"Yes!" Tim said thankfully.
"Oh. Uh, okay." Kon stared at him. "Can I ask--why?"
Tim breathed a sigh of relief. At last, on ground he could defend. "Well, for starters the average marriage in the United States only has a two in three chance of succeeding, but if both partners have remained abstinent, they are less likely to cheat on one another by fourteen percent. Also, likelihood of jealousy of an ex by drops by thirty-two percent, which in turn decreases the probability of one or both partners to commit adultery by another sixteen percent, thereby ensuring that…” Tim managed another three minutes like that, finally running out of the list of statistics he’d memorized off the U.S. Census Bureau website almost eight years ago.
He’d considered it best to leave out the ones pertaining to unwanted pregnancies.
"So you see it actually makes perfect sense."
Kon was looking a little wide-eyed, but he nodded along. "Um, I gotta say, man, I, uh, never actually knew you even wanted to get married. I figured you'd follow in Batman or Nightwing's footsteps."
"I see. My closest relationship a leather-clad criminal I spar with on rooftops, or passionate relationships that always end badly with really inappropriate one-night-stands in between," Tim said dryly. "Yes, I can see how you'd think I'd want to do that."
Kon flushed a bit, but raised an eyebrow at him. "Well, still. Why do you want to get married?"
Tim bit his lip. One of the downsides to a three-year friendship that had grown into a relationship was that Kon was getting steadily better at knowing when Tim was trying to distract him. "I. Well, there are a number of statistics related to the mental and emotional health benefits derived from marriage, not to mention the corresponding boost to one's career, so to speak, and I--"
"--The real reason Tim," Kon interrupted.
Tim halted, in the middle of a comparison between post-2005 stress levels of both happily married and unmarried persons who held jobs with a high danger-quotient, and flushed.
Quite suddenly, he couldn't seem to make his voice work.
Kon waited.
"The thing is," Tim said, suddenly, "my parents had a really great relationship. They were--they were partners and equals, they had the kind of marriage that most couples only dream of. Not all sentimental, and not 'true love' or whatever," Tim actually descended to using air quotes to show his disgust with the idea, "but... They were always there for each other. Always tried to put each other first. And I saw--when I was eight and my dad ended up in the hospital for a month and they didn't know whether he'd live, I saw what that did to my mom. And after she died," Tim's voice cracked, but only slightly, "he was--he was half a person." He paused and swallowed, and chanced a glance up at Kon's face.
It was unreadable, and Tim dropped his gaze back to the pavement. "You wouldn't think I'd want that, would you? Knowing how much it'd hurt. But. I saw how much stronger they were together. Neither of them were weak people alone, but together--they could face down anything." Tim licked his lips nervously. "I just--I want that."
Kon was silent for a long moment, and Tim had to use every bit of his Bat-training to keep from fidgeting. He didn't think Kon would break up with him, but he didn't know if Kon could really understand--Kon, who had hadn't managed to go a full twenty-four hours before losing his virginity when he first broke out of Cadmus.
"Okay."
Tim's head snapped up and he stared at his boyfriend. "Okay?"
"Yeah. I get it. What you said." Kon paused. "So. Do you wanna get married, then?"
Tim choked. "What?"
Kon stared back at him. "Well? I mean, we don't have to; I can go without sex you know," he added in an aggrieved tone. "It'll suck, but--this is important to you, so... it's cool."
Tim said (and it was rather more of a shout), "Are you telling me that after that whole speech about how marriage is important to me, you think I'd want to marry you just to get laid?!"
Kon said, "No."
Tim stopped, his rant cut short. "Well... then what--"
"I think," Kon said patiently, "we should get married because we're totally going to anyway. I mean, you're pretty much it for me, and I know you feel about the same way, so it really just comes down to how long we want to put it off. And I don't. At all. Besides," Kon added, "while I will still totally wait if you want to, it's an exercise in pointless masochism when we're going to be married eventually anyway."
Dazedly, Tim repeated, "An exercise in..."
"Yeah, I read it somewhere. Or, y'know, saw it on TV," Kon amended sheepishly.
"Wait." Tim felt they'd rather strayed from the point. "'I'm it for you?' What the hell does that mean?"
"Well, yeah. C'mon dude, you know you're the only guy I've ever wanted--"
"Really."
"--to get married to," Kon finished hastily. "Even before we were making out, hell, even before you wanted to be friends with me, you were still always the one person I went looking for to hang out with."
"I--if you're about to say you chose me, or fell in love with me at first sight--" Tim warned.
Kon blatantly rolled his eyes. "Oh, please. I wasn't--in love with you--until like, I dunno, a year ago or so. And it wasn't a choice I made--at least at first it wasn't, or I probably wouldn't have chosen you for my best friend. You were a total killjoy and you wouldn't even tell me your name."
Now it was Tim's turn to roll his eyes. Honestly, would he ever get over that? It was almost five years ago!
"And I didn't even meet you until I'd been out of Cadmus for like five--"
"--Four," Tim murmured.
"--four months," Kon amended. "But after that--yeah it was pretty much you."
Tim flailed encouragingly in his direction. Kon sighed exasperatedly and continued. "You. Were. It. Okay? You were the first person I called when something cool happened, and when something bad happened, and when nothing happened at all and I wanted someone to complain to. You were always my first choice of someone to hang out with, even if hanging out only meant following you around listening to you bitch at me about how much of your patrol I was screwing up. You were the guy I wanted at my back, and the only person I trusted enough to follow--shut up, I did so, Apokolips doesn't count--and you were the person I always went to for advice even when I knew you couldn't help at all.”
I followed you--well more liked dragged you--into forming YJ, and then into joining the Titans, and then into re-forming the Titans as leaders. Except for five--four months, I've spent my entire life following you or pulling you along with me, you were the guy I always wanted with me. The guy I always saved up jokes to tell to, and the guy I came back from the dead for, and for the past couple of years, the guy I wanted to kiss."
"Tim, for me? You. Are. It."
Tim was silent.
"Hey, Tim? Buddy? C'mon, Rob, say something, give me some clue as to what's going on inside that crazy head of yours."
What was going on inside of Tim's head was, I am a mature, responsible adult. I am logical, and not emotional, and I still have my balls, and dammit I am NOT GOING TO CRY. Oh God. I really love this idiot.
Meanwhile, Kon was growing increasingly frantic. "Tim? Tim? Will you just--look if I said something wrong, I'll--"
"Yes."
"--totally take it ba--what?"
"Yes. Um," Tim finally pulled his gaze away from the floor and met Kon's wide eyes with his own, very-nearly-almost-completely-and-it-doesn't-matter-anyway-because-Batman-won't-ever-know dry-eyed gaze. "I'll. You know. I'll marry you," he clarified, when it began to appear that no, Kon didn't know.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"Oh," Kon said, in a happier tone. "Okay, cool."
Tim did not groan. Apparently Kon's sudden eloquence was as brief as it was unexpected. "Cool?"
"Yeah," Kon said, smiling goofily. "Cool."
Tim bit back his own smile, and then decided that if there was ever a time he could smile without ruining his reputation for being nearly as frightening as Batman it was now, and he let himself grin. "Kon?"
"Yeah?" Kon said, still grinning.
"We could kiss now," Tim suggested, moving forwards.
"Oh, yeah?" Kon said, grinning even more.
"Yeah," and Tim caught his boyfriend's--fiancé’s--mouth with his own. Kissing, he decided, was even better now. And it had been pretty awesome before.
After a period of time he couldn't quite estimate due to having been very distracted Tim managed to pull his head together enough to realize that if they didn't stop, two decades of abstinence were going to end right here on the roof. "Kon, we can't--"
"Yeah, okay," Kon said, pulling back immediately. The wistful expression on his face as he ran his eyes up and down Tim's body said something else entirely, though, and Tim felt heat rush through him.
"You know," he said, catching hold Kon's hands, "it shouldn't take more than two weeks to get a marriage license and church reservation in Kansas."
Kon brightened, then grinned lasciviously at him. "It'll only take about forty minutes to fly to Vegas and find a chapel with Elvis," he said, pulling Tim in closer.
Tim raised an eyebrow at him. "Mm hmm. And do you want to be the one to tell Clark and Jonathan and Marth Kent that we deprived them of a proper church wedding at Smallville and ran off to Vegas because we couldn't keep out of each other's pants for two weeks?"
Kon froze. "Ah."
"Exactly."
"So. Two weeks then?"
"Hopefully less." Actually, it could probably be done in twenty-four hours or less, but if they were going to do this, they might as well do it properly.
Also, Tim knew it was going to be hysterical watching Kon being driven slowly crazy by his relatives--and Tim's own Gotham family, who he had every intention of pawning off onto Kon while he claimed to be busy with 'work'.
Later, Tim would regret that all the adrenaline and excitement had rendered his memory of Kon's words blurry and unreliable. This would last only for a few years, until Oracle would hack the old satellite feeds and do something illegal and previously impossible with security cameras, reflections in the Tower's windows, and highly sophisticated lip-reading and voice-software, and present the finished tape of their conversation to them as an anniversary gift. After their guests had insisted on watching it (egged on subtly by Bruce, who had already seen it and was ever interested in embarrassing the son-in-law he still found unnerving) and Kon had made an excellent attempt at turning tactile telekinesis into teleportation through the floor, Tim and Kon would fervently agree that some things were better off left unremembered.
End.
Author's Note: And then they moved to into a two-bedroom house with a white-picket fence on the outskirts of Gotham, and adopted a black cat that liked to perch up high on furniture and jump out on people's heads, and a yappy dog that was unnervingly intelligent and prone to scheming and hated Clark on sight and that Kon was always threatening to shave bald and rename 'Luthor'--"Can't you just see it Tim? 'Sit, Luthor! Luthor, play dead! Baaad, Luthor, baaad!' Come on, Tim, it'd be hysterical!" And they lived happily ever after.
And hey, the first month of procrastination was totally justified. First I broke the keyboard, then I broke the laptop I was borrowing from my sister, and then I broke my finger. (And okay, it was more of a strain/sprain thing and my sister's computer was due for a fixin' by the magical people at HP anyway but broke sounds funnier. Especially since I really, really broke the keyboard. I'm not kidding. I knocked over a half a cup of water on it, and then twenty minutes after mopping that up and using a hair dryer on the keyboard I knocked over the same cup AGAIN, and then an hour or so after that I dumped a cup of milk on it when I lost my balance. And then I decided to go back to bed).
Anyway. Because the later it gets in the morning, the more verbose I become (see above), my drabblet-thing turned into this 2200 word fic. Tim/Kon, massively fluffy, and not a raincloud of angst in sight.
Tie the Knot
Tim really had meant to bring this up in a better setting. Somewhere they could discuss things as calm, rational adults. But then Kon did that thing with his tongue and Tim’s shirt was long gone and his pants nearly followed before he managed to concentrate long enough to shove Kon off of him and sit up.
"I believe in sex before marriage!" Tim blurted out in a slightly more higher-pitched voice than usual. Then, as Kon's face brightened, he ran that sentence through his mind another time. "No wait, I meant, I believe in marriage before sex!"
The look on Kon's face now would have been comic gold if the topic were any less serious. "Um. Are you--are you saying you want to wait until you're married to have sex?"
"Yes!" Tim said thankfully.
"Oh. Uh, okay." Kon stared at him. "Can I ask--why?"
Tim breathed a sigh of relief. At last, on ground he could defend. "Well, for starters the average marriage in the United States only has a two in three chance of succeeding, but if both partners have remained abstinent, they are less likely to cheat on one another by fourteen percent. Also, likelihood of jealousy of an ex by drops by thirty-two percent, which in turn decreases the probability of one or both partners to commit adultery by another sixteen percent, thereby ensuring that…” Tim managed another three minutes like that, finally running out of the list of statistics he’d memorized off the U.S. Census Bureau website almost eight years ago.
He’d considered it best to leave out the ones pertaining to unwanted pregnancies.
"So you see it actually makes perfect sense."
Kon was looking a little wide-eyed, but he nodded along. "Um, I gotta say, man, I, uh, never actually knew you even wanted to get married. I figured you'd follow in Batman or Nightwing's footsteps."
"I see. My closest relationship a leather-clad criminal I spar with on rooftops, or passionate relationships that always end badly with really inappropriate one-night-stands in between," Tim said dryly. "Yes, I can see how you'd think I'd want to do that."
Kon flushed a bit, but raised an eyebrow at him. "Well, still. Why do you want to get married?"
Tim bit his lip. One of the downsides to a three-year friendship that had grown into a relationship was that Kon was getting steadily better at knowing when Tim was trying to distract him. "I. Well, there are a number of statistics related to the mental and emotional health benefits derived from marriage, not to mention the corresponding boost to one's career, so to speak, and I--"
"--The real reason Tim," Kon interrupted.
Tim halted, in the middle of a comparison between post-2005 stress levels of both happily married and unmarried persons who held jobs with a high danger-quotient, and flushed.
Quite suddenly, he couldn't seem to make his voice work.
Kon waited.
"The thing is," Tim said, suddenly, "my parents had a really great relationship. They were--they were partners and equals, they had the kind of marriage that most couples only dream of. Not all sentimental, and not 'true love' or whatever," Tim actually descended to using air quotes to show his disgust with the idea, "but... They were always there for each other. Always tried to put each other first. And I saw--when I was eight and my dad ended up in the hospital for a month and they didn't know whether he'd live, I saw what that did to my mom. And after she died," Tim's voice cracked, but only slightly, "he was--he was half a person." He paused and swallowed, and chanced a glance up at Kon's face.
It was unreadable, and Tim dropped his gaze back to the pavement. "You wouldn't think I'd want that, would you? Knowing how much it'd hurt. But. I saw how much stronger they were together. Neither of them were weak people alone, but together--they could face down anything." Tim licked his lips nervously. "I just--I want that."
Kon was silent for a long moment, and Tim had to use every bit of his Bat-training to keep from fidgeting. He didn't think Kon would break up with him, but he didn't know if Kon could really understand--Kon, who had hadn't managed to go a full twenty-four hours before losing his virginity when he first broke out of Cadmus.
"Okay."
Tim's head snapped up and he stared at his boyfriend. "Okay?"
"Yeah. I get it. What you said." Kon paused. "So. Do you wanna get married, then?"
Tim choked. "What?"
Kon stared back at him. "Well? I mean, we don't have to; I can go without sex you know," he added in an aggrieved tone. "It'll suck, but--this is important to you, so... it's cool."
Tim said (and it was rather more of a shout), "Are you telling me that after that whole speech about how marriage is important to me, you think I'd want to marry you just to get laid?!"
Kon said, "No."
Tim stopped, his rant cut short. "Well... then what--"
"I think," Kon said patiently, "we should get married because we're totally going to anyway. I mean, you're pretty much it for me, and I know you feel about the same way, so it really just comes down to how long we want to put it off. And I don't. At all. Besides," Kon added, "while I will still totally wait if you want to, it's an exercise in pointless masochism when we're going to be married eventually anyway."
Dazedly, Tim repeated, "An exercise in..."
"Yeah, I read it somewhere. Or, y'know, saw it on TV," Kon amended sheepishly.
"Wait." Tim felt they'd rather strayed from the point. "'I'm it for you?' What the hell does that mean?"
"Well, yeah. C'mon dude, you know you're the only guy I've ever wanted--"
"Really."
"--to get married to," Kon finished hastily. "Even before we were making out, hell, even before you wanted to be friends with me, you were still always the one person I went looking for to hang out with."
"I--if you're about to say you chose me, or fell in love with me at first sight--" Tim warned.
Kon blatantly rolled his eyes. "Oh, please. I wasn't--in love with you--until like, I dunno, a year ago or so. And it wasn't a choice I made--at least at first it wasn't, or I probably wouldn't have chosen you for my best friend. You were a total killjoy and you wouldn't even tell me your name."
Now it was Tim's turn to roll his eyes. Honestly, would he ever get over that? It was almost five years ago!
"And I didn't even meet you until I'd been out of Cadmus for like five--"
"--Four," Tim murmured.
"--four months," Kon amended. "But after that--yeah it was pretty much you."
Tim flailed encouragingly in his direction. Kon sighed exasperatedly and continued. "You. Were. It. Okay? You were the first person I called when something cool happened, and when something bad happened, and when nothing happened at all and I wanted someone to complain to. You were always my first choice of someone to hang out with, even if hanging out only meant following you around listening to you bitch at me about how much of your patrol I was screwing up. You were the guy I wanted at my back, and the only person I trusted enough to follow--shut up, I did so, Apokolips doesn't count--and you were the person I always went to for advice even when I knew you couldn't help at all.”
I followed you--well more liked dragged you--into forming YJ, and then into joining the Titans, and then into re-forming the Titans as leaders. Except for five--four months, I've spent my entire life following you or pulling you along with me, you were the guy I always wanted with me. The guy I always saved up jokes to tell to, and the guy I came back from the dead for, and for the past couple of years, the guy I wanted to kiss."
"Tim, for me? You. Are. It."
Tim was silent.
"Hey, Tim? Buddy? C'mon, Rob, say something, give me some clue as to what's going on inside that crazy head of yours."
What was going on inside of Tim's head was, I am a mature, responsible adult. I am logical, and not emotional, and I still have my balls, and dammit I am NOT GOING TO CRY. Oh God. I really love this idiot.
Meanwhile, Kon was growing increasingly frantic. "Tim? Tim? Will you just--look if I said something wrong, I'll--"
"Yes."
"--totally take it ba--what?"
"Yes. Um," Tim finally pulled his gaze away from the floor and met Kon's wide eyes with his own, very-nearly-almost-completely-and-it-doesn't-matter-anyway-because-Batman-won't-ever-know dry-eyed gaze. "I'll. You know. I'll marry you," he clarified, when it began to appear that no, Kon didn't know.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"Oh," Kon said, in a happier tone. "Okay, cool."
Tim did not groan. Apparently Kon's sudden eloquence was as brief as it was unexpected. "Cool?"
"Yeah," Kon said, smiling goofily. "Cool."
Tim bit back his own smile, and then decided that if there was ever a time he could smile without ruining his reputation for being nearly as frightening as Batman it was now, and he let himself grin. "Kon?"
"Yeah?" Kon said, still grinning.
"We could kiss now," Tim suggested, moving forwards.
"Oh, yeah?" Kon said, grinning even more.
"Yeah," and Tim caught his boyfriend's--fiancé’s--mouth with his own. Kissing, he decided, was even better now. And it had been pretty awesome before.
After a period of time he couldn't quite estimate due to having been very distracted Tim managed to pull his head together enough to realize that if they didn't stop, two decades of abstinence were going to end right here on the roof. "Kon, we can't--"
"Yeah, okay," Kon said, pulling back immediately. The wistful expression on his face as he ran his eyes up and down Tim's body said something else entirely, though, and Tim felt heat rush through him.
"You know," he said, catching hold Kon's hands, "it shouldn't take more than two weeks to get a marriage license and church reservation in Kansas."
Kon brightened, then grinned lasciviously at him. "It'll only take about forty minutes to fly to Vegas and find a chapel with Elvis," he said, pulling Tim in closer.
Tim raised an eyebrow at him. "Mm hmm. And do you want to be the one to tell Clark and Jonathan and Marth Kent that we deprived them of a proper church wedding at Smallville and ran off to Vegas because we couldn't keep out of each other's pants for two weeks?"
Kon froze. "Ah."
"Exactly."
"So. Two weeks then?"
"Hopefully less." Actually, it could probably be done in twenty-four hours or less, but if they were going to do this, they might as well do it properly.
Also, Tim knew it was going to be hysterical watching Kon being driven slowly crazy by his relatives--and Tim's own Gotham family, who he had every intention of pawning off onto Kon while he claimed to be busy with 'work'.
Later, Tim would regret that all the adrenaline and excitement had rendered his memory of Kon's words blurry and unreliable. This would last only for a few years, until Oracle would hack the old satellite feeds and do something illegal and previously impossible with security cameras, reflections in the Tower's windows, and highly sophisticated lip-reading and voice-software, and present the finished tape of their conversation to them as an anniversary gift. After their guests had insisted on watching it (egged on subtly by Bruce, who had already seen it and was ever interested in embarrassing the son-in-law he still found unnerving) and Kon had made an excellent attempt at turning tactile telekinesis into teleportation through the floor, Tim and Kon would fervently agree that some things were better off left unremembered.
End.
Author's Note: And then they moved to into a two-bedroom house with a white-picket fence on the outskirts of Gotham, and adopted a black cat that liked to perch up high on furniture and jump out on people's heads, and a yappy dog that was unnervingly intelligent and prone to scheming and hated Clark on sight and that Kon was always threatening to shave bald and rename 'Luthor'--"Can't you just see it Tim? 'Sit, Luthor! Luthor, play dead! Baaad, Luthor, baaad!' Come on, Tim, it'd be hysterical!" And they lived happily ever after.