[fic] Green, not of this place (Clark/Tim et al., NC-17)
Title: Green, not of this place ( reference)
Series: The Metaphysics of Presence #2 ( #1)
Fandom: DCU (early TT v.3, Lewis-era ROBIN, c.#111)
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Still never mine.
Characters: Superman, Tim, Batman, Kon, Cassie, Lois. Expect various non-Euclidean combinations thereof.
Summary: If you lived here, you'd be home by now.
Warning: Roving POV and linguistic pornography.
Notes: Epigraph from Buber, I and Thou. Thanks to all those who read an early draft, particularly Te, Jack, Petra and Jubilancy, and to the ever-patient and inspirational G., who beta'd. Follows "Reform it altogether", but can probably be read alone.
"The longing for relation is primary, the cupped hand into which the being that confronts us nestles; and the relation to that, which is a wordless anticipation of saying You, comes second."
The Cave's files maintain that whatever the extent of Superman's powers (and the files' author remains doubtful that those powers have yet to be adequately described), one thing is certain. All those powers are dwarfed in scope and scale by the alien's reliance on...well, on the milk of human kindness, if one wants to put a sentimental and proverbial cast on the situation.
Tim first read this argument before he received his suit. *After* he'd stolen Jason's, but well before he earned his own. When he was something like a child, creeping through the Cave, studying what it meant to be a hero.
He doesn't know if Jason ever met Superman; he suspects so, but there's no way to ask.
*How*, exactly, would he ask? He doesn't know *whom* he'd ask, let alone what words he would use.
Tim's thoughts have been turning back along the paths of memory more and more often lately. That skinny boy he was, reading and learning with the eagerness of...not a hero. A *student*, an addict, an ignorant child.
This is not nostalgia, but reevaluation. Memories are as fluid as fantasy, and his revisiting the past has nothing to do with *missing* it (his mother) and everything to do with learning more. Analyzing what he could not have understood *then*, what he may yet come to know *now*.
*
Kon is unhappy with Tim. That much is clear. When Tim enters the Tower, late on Saturday morning, through the main room, Kon yells, "Well, look who's here! Nice of you to join us, man."
From the couch, Cassie shushes him. Bart laughs and waves.
Tim ignores Kon's continued mutters and addresses Vic. "Sorry about this, but --"
"No worries," Vic says and shoos Gar-the-mynah off his shoulder. "Got your message."
"Good," Tim says and makes for the stairs to the dorm. "Thanks."
He gets to the top of the flight before Kon flies past him, jostling his shoulder. He blocks the hallway for a moment before he lets Tim pass and unlock his door.
"We really could've used you last night." Kon pushes into the room.
"I don't see why," Tim says and unzips his backpack to start unpacking. "A supercharged toddler opening chronal vortices sounds tailor-made for you and Cassie and Bart. I would have been in the way."
Grabbing the pile of clean laundry and spare cape from Tim, Kon shakes his head furiously. "No way! Never!"
Tim cocks his head. "Really?"
"Really, really. It was *sick*, man." Kon kicks open the closet door and tosses the clothes inside. "Bart was running all over the place and --"
Tim empties his shaving kit, then goes to put the clean underwear away. "That is what Bart does."
"Different. He totally wasn't listening --"
"Also what he does."
Kon jabs Tim's shoulder, three times, before saying, "And Cassie was throwing that lasso and I kept *hitting* the bastard and --"
Tim closes the dresser drawer and leans against it. "Sounds like a typical night to me."
"But you weren't *there*," Kon says, sounding simultaneously impatient and bewildered.
"No. Isn't that what we're talking about?"
Kon grimaces, then shakes his head. "*Exactly*."
"Exactly -- what?" Squinting at Kon, Tim tries to find the -- often distant, always twisted -- logic. "Go over that again."
"You said it was typical. A typical night. *Not* typical --" Kon paces the length of Tim's room in a little under four seconds. His shoulders swing like the farmboy he has to pretend to be. "Because *you* weren't here."
If there is logic to be found anywhere in this conversation, it's an absurdly circular one. Tim sighs. "I -- I don't know what to say."
"Jeez, *dude*." Kon rolls off the wall and peers at Tim. The bridge of his nose sports two red divots where his glasses pinch the skin. He got another haircut; the skin along his hairline is pale, painfully so, newly exposed. Tim curls his fingers into loose fists. He wouldn't *touch*, but -- caution. Caution can never be overdone. "Say you're sorry, maybe?"
Sitting on the edge of his desk, Tim draws a deep breath. "Um. I'm sorry I missed something that I wouldn't have been any help with?"
Kon *looks* at him, mouth open, eyes wide, frozen. Not a deer -- a *buffalo* in headlights. Looming over Tim, and he seems to have grown another inch and a half. "You don't get it, do you?"
"No," Tim replies. It feels like a confession. "I --. No."
Kon looks exactly like Tim feels. Baffled, even -- flabbergasted.
"Right. Well." Kon makes a show of checking his watch. His voice is flat, as close to affectless as he can get. "Wow. My, look at the time. I better get going."
They don't have anything scheduled for three hours.
*
Tim knows all too well the difference between fantasy and possibility. They diverge just outside the boundary of one's own skin, and never the twain -- et cetera.
Fantasy lives *inside* and cannot be exposed to the air. To reality.
Possibility, however, exists in the space between you and the world. What *might* happen hovers around you. On occasion, it assumes form and becomes reality.
The definition of insanity, of course, is the failure to distinguish the two. Lunatics like Joker, Two-Face, Scarecrow cannot accept that their fantasies cannot become real. Their possibilities stew in the realm of fantasy, boil over in their minds, get loose and wreak havoc.
From this perspective, then, Tim's love for --. No. Tim's *attraction to* Kon is private, fantastical, unreal. Impossible.
His love is real. His attraction is --. Not.
Every weekend, it seems as if Kon has thickened just that much more. Mrs. Kent's cooking, combined with good hard work and an accelerated, mysterious maturation process, has filled him out admirably. Week to week, he might become a stranger, but in Tim's mind, he is forever familiar. Whatever his outward appearance, he's *Kon*. He'll always be taller, louder, *bigger*. Himself, with hands too big for his wrists and sun-wrinkles nearly invisible around his eyes, rough easy voice and warm, sudden touch.
That touch is fraternal. Not that Tim's understanding of "fraternal" is anything other than -- literal, dictionary-derived, semantic. Dick has done his best, over the years, on and off, to make that understanding something more -- immediate. Physical.
The fact that those efforts have resulted in -- in *this*, Tim's hand shoved down his briefs, his face turned to the wall, tongue in his teeth and fingernails raking his sac.
Well.
That's not Dick's fault any more than it is Kon's. Attraction is private, held in the back of his constricting throat, squeezed in the palm of his hand, and neither of them needs to *know* about it.
"Beautiful."
Tim's backbone unfolds, jerks open, and what he'd thought -- hoped -- was a gust off the Bay through his open window resolves into --.
Superman.
Fog and dew twinkling in his hair, across his cheek, and his face is wide, remote, as the moon. His cape twists and flutters, nearly as loud as Tim's thudding pulse.
Tim blinks. Opens his eyes to find Superman kneeling next to his bed, one large, warm hand pushing over Tim's thigh, pulling down his briefs, to join Tim's own -- cramped, clawed, *arthritic* hand around his --.
"Uhhk --" Tim's mouth works uselessly against Superman's chin, his lips, as he shoves into the warm grip and the orgasm shakes out of him.
"Oh..." Superman kisses Tim's mouth, his cheek and throat, stroking out the last shuddering jolts of pleasure. When Tim pulls away, Superman smiles at him and pats his shoulder. "Oh, *my*."
Tim's room in the Tower is bare as a cell. White cement walls and standard-issue pale-wood furniture, nothing to notice, nothing to *see*. But Superman fills it with a blaze of color, the scent of *air* and reckless winds, and Tim. Tim doesn't --.
"I don't," he works out, aloud, lowering his eyes from the blaze of Superman's smile. "Know what to say."
Superman doesn't reply. He continues to smile, never stops -- *can* he stop? -- as he lifts his hand to his mouth and sucks it clean. Tim's hips pump twice, three times, at the sudden cold *absence* of touch before he can control himself.
In Tim's dazed, startled *loss* of thought, he thinks that Superman's tongue is as red as his cape. He shivers and the smile *broadens*.
"Here. What are you doing -- *here*?" Tim pushes up onto his elbow as Superman rises off his knees, plants one in the curve of Tim's waist, and lowers himself onto the bed.
"Would you believe --" Superman's breath is ozone and *Tim*, working warmly into Tim's mouth. "Guest lecture?"
Gotham is one thing; Superman doesn't fit there, stands out bright and...*alien* against grime and shadows. But the Tower is -- in its clean, angular plainness, it's even *less* a place for him. For this.
His blue jersey, stretched over shoulders horizon-wide, and *eyes*, and Tim is *lost*.
"Ah," Tim says and Superman's hair is damp, silky, under his hands. "Of course."
*If you lived here, you'd be home by now*: His mother used to say that on the drive home from excursions into the city. When they got stuck in traffic, when the line of brake-lights stretched like an endless necklace ahead of them. Tim never knew *why* she said that, only that she did it to bother his father, that it worked, but the phrase comes to him now.
Superman doesn't fit anywhere. He makes the Earth his home. Thesis, antithesis, and the synthesis is -- this. The startling beauty of it all.
*
Clark knows full well that he does not need an *excuse* to meet with Robin. It is, however, at once expedient and useful to use this visit to San Francisco to touch base. Dressed as a civilian, he takes Robin to a small bistro on the outskirts of gentrifying Oakland.
He would like to cover the basic issues. The status of their respective jobs, their teams. The mission.
Robin is nothing but consummately professional. Clark cannot help but treat him as a colleague; the difference in their ages is, perhaps, regrettable, but it need not be an obstacle.
"You're doing very good work," Clark tells Robin. "With the Titans."
"I don't know about that." Robin sets down his fork with a precise 'tink'. "We're still getting the hang of it."
"Oh?"
Clark likes to hear Robin talk. Likes to hear his *thoughts* as they occur and gain form. The process is never hesitant, but it does take time, time in which Clark can admire its stages. Like clouds massing on the horizon, gathering and tripling in size, pale light solidifying into castles and keeps, that process is visible *on* Robin. Throughout him, in gestures and expressions as much as in words.
Robin sips his glass of milk, then cleans his upper lip quickly with the tip of his pink, quick tongue. "In a very real sense, we are modeling our group on yours."
"I don't have --" Clark spreads his hands. "There's just me and Kara."
"The JLA."
"Oh."
Robin rearranges his cape. "And Kon --. Conner. Don't forget him."
"Of course not." Conner is taking Clark's visit with his usual bravado and twitchy *noise*. Clark bites the corner of his lip and adds, "You were saying...?"
Robin's hand blurs as he waves it, green and fast. "The model *is* healthy. To a certain extent. But I have come to believe, recently, that --"
Clark wonders if Robin knows that he savors the pauses in his speech, that his mouth and tongue form, *corporealize*, the commas with humid breath. Sweet, milk-stained breath.
No, he can't realize that. Although --. If anyone can, it would be Robin.
"Sorry?" Clark exaggerates the action of shaking himself back to attention.
Robin smiles for the briefest moment. "If you'd prefer --"
"No. No, please --" Clark remembers just in time to grasp Robin's wrist with only minimal -- *human* -- pressure. "Continue."
"In sum? We are..." Robin frowns, the top edge of his mask wrinkling minutely. "We are not you."
Clark swallows. "I don't think that anyone's asking you to --"
"I never suggested that was the case."
"Oh. Oh, but --" Clark loosens his tie, wrenching it a little too hard, and gives Robin a weak grin. "I'm afraid I don't follow."
"Nothing to follow," Robin says flatly. As his shoulders tuck in, his cape shifts closed with a sigh that Clark *must* be imagining.
"I want --" In his eagerness to grasp Robin's hand again, Clark knocks over both their glasses. "Oh, *Lord*. I apologize --"
"It's waterproof," Robin says gently. He holds up his arm, where the water is already beading off the gauntlet.
"Of course it is," Clark says. More to himself than to Robin.
Whenever possible, Clark prefers not to brood. He's no good at it -- except, of course, when he's all too good at it -- and there is, as his mother likes to point out, no percentage in it. So when the meal is finished, he offers Robin his hand and shakes it firmly.
"I'll see you --" he starts to say.
Robin's smile is an angle, a tilt, not a smile. "I'm not due back home until tomorrow morning."
An offer, perhaps, expressed in only the most economical, factual terms.
"Ah?" Clark manages to wait until they're out of the restaurant, in the half-empty parking lot, before wrapping his arm around Robin's waist and lifting into the sky. Robin settles against his hip, arms looped around Clark's neck and head bent against the wind, the angle of his smile listing acutely until it resembles *pleasure*.
The nearest solitary spot is in Belize, a stretch of soft volcanic sand abutting the wall of a jungle. It is an animal reserve -- Clark helped build the fences, tries *still* not to think about saving indigenous species while indigenous *people* starve -- and relatively quiet.
Robin -- Tim? -- is relaxing incrementally, pushing into Clark's kiss, opening sweetly, hands gentle and insistent all at once. His mask is tucked into his belt, so he may be Tim.
Clark has never believed in masks. The determined squint on the boy's face is all Robin, but his sighs and rocking hips are -- both.
"Robin." Clark runs the tip of his tongue along the curve of Robin's upper lip. The skin there is soft, plump with near-bruises, tiny lacerations fresh with blood and heat. "Tim, I. I would --"
Robin's thighs flex around Clark's legs as he sighs. "What?"
"I would," Clark says and feels Robin's ribs spread, then deflate. He moves his nose and mouth down the sweat-slick skin of Robin's neck. "I would like, very much. To penetrate you."
He's glad for the mask's absence; now he can see the squint widen into startled pleasure, blue eyes wheeling for a moment before the gaze fastens again. Robin's mouth opens.
"I --. Yes." His head falls back when Clark's thumb runs lightly down his cleft. "Oh?"
It is very difficult to believe that Tim hasn't done...this. Any of this. He stares dazedly at the sky, pushing back against Clark's hand, tongue darting at the corners of his lips. The *sounds* he makes, unnerved and ragged, as his hips swivel and his hands slide off Clark's arm, then grasp again. The flush coming up over his cheeks might be sunburn. Clark needs to remember to keep track of --.
Time. But he *can't*, not with Robin mouthing the side of his neck and pushing back, down, *on* his thumb, his lashes fluttering hummingbird-fast, his sighs ripping out, high and sweet.
"More. *More* --" Robin leans forward, lifting off Clark, sliding back down -- the *pressure* and the heat inside of him, so much banked and secret, *private* -- and the long muscles on his thighs tighten, stand out. "Harder."
"Yes," Clark says and kisses him, sucking his lower lip and twisting his hand until he's thrusting faster, until Robin is shaking against him, whimpering and pulling at Clark's hair. "Yes, oh --"
"I want --" Robin falls back, almost to the sand, before Clark catches him. His penis shudders and *jabs* at the empty air until Clark strokes him, gently at first. "*Superman*."
"Right here, always here --" *Declarations* pool together with the heat in Clark's groin, strange sounds and promises that coil upward, into his mouth, fast gyres of sparks over bonfires. "Yes, yes --"
Robin twists, at the waist, his neck, his knees, until he's upright again and shuddering and *touching* Clark's own -- touching him with fast, *terrible*-beautiful strokes, his eyes on Clark's face as he fucks forward, then back, and Clark's mouth is filled, his heart is *bursting*, he --.
"Is this --? Am I what --?" Robin shakes his head and goes still. Not still; *hard* and motionless for an unbearable moment. All except his hand, which tightens on Clark and *pulls*, until Clark starts to come three seconds after Robin yowls and contorts and spills hot and thick over Clark's hand.
"Yes," Clark replies. Later, honestly. "Yes."
*
These days, Cassie looks more beautiful than ever. Bart says it's the lasso. Tim, however, attributes her new glow to Kon's renewed attentions. He's always around her, always *near* her, as close as possible. Whether they're at the dining table, in the conference room, fighting a metahuman villain on the streets of Portland, Oregon, Kon is *there*. And near.
They present a fascinating tableau, really.
She'll swat him playfully, wriggle away just far enough to be tugged back, wrestle him if he gets too forward. Throughout, she never manages to hide her smile, not completely.
"Bizarre mating rituals," Bart says as he crashes down next to Tim on the couch, as Kon chases Cassie out of the room, threatening to steal her lasso. "Do you get it? I don't get it!"
Gar transforms into a leering goat, sporting a swollen penis and testicles worthy of a statue of *Pan*. "I'll show you some mating rituals --"
"Ew!" Bart twists toward Tim, hiding his face and kicking out his leg. "Gross, go *away*!"
Tim pats Bart's back gently. "There, there." He glances at Gar, who's now a panting Rottweiler. "Down, boy."
When Gar's gone, nipping at Raven's heels as she heads for the kitchen, Bart peeks out. "Why's he mad at you?"
Tim sets his book aside. "Who, Gar?"
Rolling his eyes, Bart kicks Tim. "Kon."
"Oh. Is he?" Tim keeps his tone as mild as he can. "Mad at me?"
"Shyeah!" Bart sighs as he pulls his knees up to his chest and squirms into the corner of the couch. "He's acting all --"
Tim lifts one eyebrow. "Bitchy?"
Bart laughs -- the sound is more a *bark*, shocked and pleased and *sudden*. "He *is*!"
"Yes," Tim says. "I --. Maybe it's hormones."
Considering that, Bart chews his lower lip and jiggles his left foot. "Eww. Probably, yeah."
*
There ought to be a *word* that captures this -- standing in full costume in the Cave, before the console, waiting. With his briefs sticky and the ache of Superman's mouth imprinted all over his skin.
This is neither right nor wrong. This is *beyond* that. Possibly *behind* that, above that.
"Robin. Report."
The word would be related to...awful, awe-full, awesome, beautiful. Everything is beautiful when Superman sees it. Touches it.
Tongues it.
Robin would sway on his feet at that thought, joined with Batman's silent impatience, but he has far too much control. Instead, he sways inside, a twitch and float, as if what really counts about him is still aloft, still flying.
Behind the mask, he blinks once. "Last night was...quiet. There may, or may not, be a shipment of Bialyan guns coming in to the East End tonight."
"You've alerted Catwoman."
Batman probably expects him to bristle at that. Her territoriality has been a sticking point between them in the past, as has Batman's...tolerance of her activities.
Personal relationships, whatever their tenor, Robin firmly believes (must believe), have no place interfering in the mission.
So he neither bristles nor thinks about the stickiness between his legs. Rather, Robin simply nods. "I sent word through the usual channels."
"And Dead Johnny --" Batman says.
"-- is being arraigned tomorrow morning. I have a trig test second period, but --"
"You'll be there."
Robin nods again. "The courthouse's ductwork is very...accommodating."
"An hour on the bars, I think," Batman tells him when the report is complete. "Your flexibility is --"
"More than adequate," Robin replies. He takes his seat at a satellite terminal to the side of the main console. His right leg over Superman's shoulder, the left wrapped tightly around Superman's thigh, and he'd bent backward, into the air, his mouth and...*ass* filled with heat. Superman's mouth, his fingers.
Yes, he's very flexible.
"Is it now?" Batman asks mildly.
"Yes." Robin toggles the security screens from the Tower in San Francisco. "It is."
They work in silence for over an hour. Batman reviews toxicology reports on Dead Johnny's female victims, cross-referencing them with the Cave's database. Robin studies outbound traffic from Bialyan airspace while copying files on the Kryptonese language.
He concentrates easily, thoroughly. He is slightly warmer than usual beneath the uniform, a thin layer of sweat dampening his undershirt. His nipples are sore, stinging slightly whenever he moves and they brush against the undershirt's fabric. Such discomfort, however, is nothing compared to the injuries sustained on a typical night. Nothing, that is, except...*reassuring*. His body is stimulated, responsive, *alive*.
Arriving at the Cave in this state only heightens the pleasurable ache.
Awful, awe-ful. "Beautiful," Superman had murmured, barely audible, sensation over sense.
Robin has considered whether he is, perhaps, being terribly adolescent about this situation. The fact remains that Robin is, in a word, *thrilled*. He is warm, tingling, here in the chilly, silent, *dark* Cave.
"Show me," Batman says, having stacked the reports into a perfect pile.
"My flexibility? Of course." Robin stretches for a few moments, then tilts backward until his palms are eighteen inches from his heels, his torso bowed upward. His cape folds and pools in the gap.
After forty seconds, Robin kicks up into a handstand and holds the pose.
He will never have Dick's grace, but he has succeeded in folding, extending, *controlling* his body to an admirable degree.
"Hm." Batman circles him and Robin feels the bones in his hands press against the gauntlets. "Drop your right leg."
He complies. He can hold this standing split for forty-five seconds; after that, the muscles in his legs start to twitch and complain.
Batman's gaze is nothing like Superman's. When Superman looks at you, you are invited. *Welcomed* into hints of a better world. You are admired.
When Batman studies you, you go still and reach within yourself for yet more control.
That Robin is far more...*at home* here, under the fluorescent lights and stalactites, does not mean that he is not...beautiful-invited-afire.
He is both, and all, and thrilled.
"Your weight is canting to the left," Batman says at last.
Robin points his toes inside his left boot and sweeps it down to the floor. "But my balance is holding well."
"Work on that."
Robin nods. Again. "Of course."
*
"Sorry," Kon says loudly, insincerely, as he slings his arm around Bart's shoulders. "Speedfreaks only on this trip."
Bart's grinning like a Christmas commercial. "We're gonna beat the record!"
"Good luck, then." Tim sits back down. He doesn't bother asking what record they're challenging.
"Thanks!" Bart yells before they're gone.
*
He downloads the necessary materials -- three grammars provided by the Eradicator, Batman's own notes, both the decade-old pages scanned in at a later date and the current, computerized ones, as well as some work by various staffers from the STAR linguistics team -- and does not bother to cover his tracks. Batman has had Robin learn Navajo, Urdu, and Basque; if he questions Tim's study of Kryptonese, he won't get very far.
He tells himself he's doing it for Kon, that Kon needs a tutor, a grounding in the other-best part of himself. Cows and cornfields can only go so far.
If he misses Kon, if this brings them back together, then...that will be good, too.
But the language is complex in a way that defeats even Tim's analytical mind. For a society that cast off mysticism in favor of science, the language is deplorably (admirably?)...*animistic*. Light is particle and wave, but those particles spin, dance, whirligig and *samba* through fourteen inflections.
The pronouns name the self, the other, and...nearly everything in between. There is *I*, *you*, and *it*, but there are also *you*s that would like to be considered as *it*s, for a variety of reasons. Motivation, intent, is captured in both prefixes and the accent on the ending. There are, moreover, *it*s that aspire to self, both reasonably and ridiculously. An *I* that is born through marriage, another through funeral ceremonies.
A *we* that may only be used within the speaker's house, another that was only heard at public gatherings.
Studying Kryptonese makes him feel like he's been drugged. Something soporific and hallucinogenic, pulsing through his system, distracting his concentration. *Playing* with his concentration, shattering it into fractal shards that go dendritic and emotive.
Kryptonese is a language of emotion, rigorously expressed in poetry. Learning it is...like painting the sunset with cinders and ash. Dancing without legs while blindfolded. Fighting crime without superpowers.
Tim used to think about heroes all the time. Before his mother died, and after, and for a long time since.
He had considered Batman a hero for longer than Bart and Kon have been *alive*. He regarded the Bat as a personal demon for even longer than that.
These days, he is --. He believes --.
No.
When Stephanie was shown the Cave -- and he'll use the passive voice, because it wasn't her fault, this has nothing to do with her -- the nightmares ceased. The belief in heroes vanished with them.
He does not miss those days. Revisiting them, however, brings up memories that taste like peanut-brittle and hospital-antiseptic, waiting rooms and airports.
All heroes are orphans, to some extent. Superman and Dick and Bruce and Stephanie. Kon, Bart.
Tim studies harder.
He needs a better way to say what he means.
*
He needs a better word than hero.
*
"Why so glum, chum?" Kon has one leg hooked over the window sill, Tim's personal proximity alarm in his outstretched hand.
"Don't call me that." Tim rubs his eyes and closes his notebook. "How'd you get in here?"
"What, here?" Kon knocks his fist on the window and grins. "Little thing I like to call tactile TK..."
Tim settles for throwing an old wad of Kleenex; it lands at the bottom point of the S on Kon's chest. "Thought you'd forgotten about that."
"TTK? Never, my small and tense friend. Never forget the strange, neurologically-implanted power that has made me what I am today. X-ray vision and ice-breath may come and go -- I hope they don't go, because X-ray's everything you ever dreamed and *more* -- but I remain stout, loyal, and true to the humble TTK." Kon flops down on Tim's bed and kicks him lightly in the shin. "How'd that sound? Got an interview with Teen People next week."
"I wondered whence the preachiness," Tim says.
Kon grabs his crotch and smirks. "Whence this, buddy."
"Did you want something?"
"Yeah. *You*." Kon flings out his arms. "It's ninja night downstairs, all is quiet at Alcatraz, Bart's gone *loco* with the popcorn toppings, and you're up here doing...what? *Homework*?"
Yes, any day now, Grieve High will add Kryptonese to the curriculum, right after Mandarin and Spanish. Tim stretches, then rests his fingertips on the edge of his notebook. "Don't you have any?"
"Probably," Kon admits. He sits up suddenly and wrestles Tim into a headlock. The notebook slides to the floor, spilling his flash-cards. "But it's the weekend, the kung-fu is calling, and --"
"Thought it was ninjas." Tim wriggles free. Kon's embrace is almost as warm as Clark's. Almost.
"Like Hollywood cares." Kon plants a loud, wet kiss on Tim's head and pulls away. "Come *on*, man."
When Tim swallows, he can nearly feel the scrape and pulse of Krypton's consonants in his throat. On the back of his tongue. "I'll be down in a minute."
"Nice try. Nuh-*uh*." Kon shakes his head. "What is *up* with you?"
"What are you talking about?" Tim leans over to gather his flash-cards, but Kon hauls him back upright.
Kon's hands circle vaguely in the space between them. "You're...you're not *here* lately."
If we lived here, we'd be home by now. Tim presses his tongue back against his soft palate. "Busy."
Snorting, Kon falls back onto the bed again. "Miss you."
"Mmm," Tim says. "It's --. Mutual."
Kon is spread over his bed, *Tim's* bed, legs akimbo, arms under his head. His t-shirt rides up three and a quarter inches from the waistband of his jeans. There are *bars* of muscle beneath the skin, a fine, narrow cloud of hair running down from his navel.
He has a *navel*. Crafted in a test-tube, but --.
"Like what you see?" Kon runs his hands up his shirt, showily, ridiculously, a burlesque of...burlesque, pinching his nipples and making a pornographic face.
Tim pinches the bridge of his nose. "Let's go watch the movie."
*
Clark believes that Gotham, as a place, as an *experience*, encourages disguise. The city is old enough, adorned over centuries of life, that it's not hard to think of it as a crone, brightly made-up and disturbingly flirtatious.
It certainly does not *discourage* costume and necessary deception. Bruce alone is proof of that. If he'd grown up in Metropolis, would he be...himself? Surely not.
And such deception is worth it when Tim turns the corner from his bus stop and sees Clark. In narrow glasses that Lois calls metrosexual and a dove-gray dress shirt woven with...spandex? Some unnatural fiber that makes the fabric cling uncomfortably to Clark's skin.
"Interesting," Tim says and shifts his backpack to his other shoulder. He shades his eyes against the sun and appears to take a longer look. "You --. Hello."
"I hoped I could take you to dinner." The man Clark is posing as would have his hands in his pockets, so he does so. "If you're not --"
The sun may be in Tim's eyes, but that means that his swallow, the tendons in his neck, are all the more visible. "My father --"
"Ah." Clark relieves Tim of the backpack and grants himself one touch, just his index finger, down the hollow at the nape of Tim's neck. "I'm looking forward to meeting him."
Tim's pulse accelerates. His breath sounds sharp as he exhales. "I don't --." One glance at Clark and the tension in his shoulders does not ease so much as shift lower, into his hands. "All right."
It amuses Tim to tell his parents that Clark is a journalism teacher named Carl Krummett. Clark's not entirely sure why he finds this amusing, but anything that helps him...relax, is welcome.
Jack Drake resembles the man Bruce has described to Clark, genteelly gone to seed. He's older, *grayer* in the face and hair, than Clark had expected. Effortlessly kind, however, and his wife --. Dana seems to adore Tim.
Tim's heartbeat remains rabbit-fast throughout the meal, yet -- and Clark both admires and worries about this -- he gives no sign of being anything other than -- what he looks like.
A teenager, with loving parents, embarrassed by his teacher's presence, comfortable at home. The sweat yoking across his back, nestling in his shoulder-blades, is, of course, perceptible only to Clark.
He'll lick it up later, apologize and tease, and --.
"Thank you," he says to Dana as she hands him a cup of decaffeinated coffee. "Your hospitality is -- wonderful."
Her smile reminds Clark of Ron Troupe's, pleased and shy, brighter than she knows. "It's just good to hear such glowing reports about Tim."
"Dana --" Tim shifts and kicks the leg of his chair.
"You shush," she tells him and Tim ducks his head. Smiles, and only Clark can see.
"Tim's always tested well," Jack Drake tells Clark when Tim and Dana retire to the kitchen. "But in and out of school like he's been --"
"There's no hint of problems," Clark assures him.
"I blame myself," Drake says. "We --. Well."
The hair on the back of Drake's hand is silvered, his knuckles smooth and round. He played lacrosse and football in college; Clark doubts Tim will ever reach his father's *size*. His mother must have been a delicately-boned woman.
"He's very well-adjusted," Clark says and Drake meets his eye.
His smile is full of pride as well as doubt. "Good to know," he says gruffly.
Tim fits here, but he does not belong.
*
There are places where they find some measure of privacy. This pansexual coffee-house in the back streets of Amsterdam is one of those places.
"It occurs to me --" Tim starts, then pauses. Clark is listening closely, tilting toward him as he runs his hands lightly up and down Tim's arms. He smiles encouragingly. "We'll never be --"
It is neither an exaggeration nor a cliche to observe that Clark's face *falls* when he hears the negative.
Tim clears his throat. "I mean to say --. That is, we are --"
Clark has closed his eyes. "I'm sorry."
"I haven't said anything."
"Nevertheless." Clark opens his eyes. "Please. Go on."
On the hard pine bench, Tim shifts and settles. He cannot lie to *Superman* -- but etiquette, civility, simple human *kindness*, all encourage a certain deception as necessary. "Never mind." He waves his free hand. "I've lost it now."
Clark takes that hand. "You were -- pardon me if I'm wrong -- going to observe that we'll never be --" He kisses Tim's palm. The heat of it spirals through Tim's body, whirls around the center. "Equals? Peers. Something along those lines."
Clark's gaze is steady, his grasp firm, and yet --. And yet. Tim wants to rock back, dodge an absent blow, seek shelter from the storm.
"Yes," he says finally. No lies; Superman is his own E-M field, disrupting all deception and mendacity.
"You know that I don't agree," Clark says quietly.
Tim's fingers curl. "Yes."
"That sounded like regret," Clark says and smiles. "In your voice just now."
"It wass," Tim says.
"Regret for the content or for the --." He tilts his head. "The fact that I guessed correctly?"
It's too easy to forget that Clark is a reporter, attuned to subtlety, accustomed to difficult questions. Tim passes his hand over his face, then coughs lightly. Clark is waiting, always waiting, ever-hopeful.
Tim doesn't know what to say. And then the thought gathers in his mouth, forms itself into sound, and he says, «I cannot deceive you, my friend.»
The *I* of companionship, echoed and underscored by the closing epithet.
Clark's eyes widen shockily, blue over throbbing *heat*, as he yanks Tim forward, across the table.
Tim falls, is caught, goes dizzy. All at once, as the table's pushed out of the way and he confronts...*Clark*. This is the blow, the wind, the *storm* he'd feared a moment ago -- but there is nothing to fear, even less to resist. Within the wind, he is flying, Clark's kiss welcoming and widening. Catching him up, enfolding him.
«Yes. A bounteous gratitude is my reply,» Clark mouths against Tim's cheek. The statement is more texture, tongue and lips, than sound. Tim is unsure of his translation, still working it out, when Clark adds, «Please, speak again. More.»
Tim shakes, gasps, as his mind goes blank. For a long, terrifying moment, words and inflections vanish before the bright, fierce *hope* on Clark's face. He struggles to make the appropriate sounds. «There is nothing more to discourse on. I am trusting in your...friendship.»
Did he say «friendship»? Companion, friend, war-comrade, and non-marital lover are all derived from the same root: The welcomed-other.
«Lover, lover,» Clark echoes into Tim's mouth. His hands are moving over Tim's sides, down his back, pulling him closer, into his lap.
He said «lover». No, that's. That's *wrong*. Factually correct, but --. Wrong.
Tim opens his mouth to explain. To *correct* -- accuracy above all things -- but no sound comes out beyond a sharp *heave*. Clark shields Tim's head with his arm and they're in the air, far from Amsterdam, wet wind streaking past.
Tim keeps his eyes closed when Clark touches down. They're somewhere warm, the air still and soft against his chapped skin.
«Recline,» Clark tells him and Tim's being pulled down to his knees, then eased back, Clark's hands moving over him, stripping and rubbing.
«I, please--» The *I* used by minors and slave-women, in appeal, to beseech. Imploring. Tim shakes his head and hears the soft murmur of grass against his ear. He needs the *I* of private friendship and finds it, somewhere in his throat. «That is, I--»
Clark places his hands on Tim's knees, pushing them up until his feet are flat on the ground, toes digging into the grass. He's silent as he palms Tim's ass, tongues him open, buries his face there. Beyond the faint, moist sounds, all Tim can hear is his own breath, sharp and fast, as Clark scrolls out incomprehensible odes in a lost script across the taut *heating* skin.
Accuracy, indeed. Tim's fingers move in Clark's hair, dig in and tangle, as his hips rise and fall, as he finds that space beyond language.
*
"It blew up," Kon shouts and throws the grammar against the wall. "Who's ever going to need to talk in a language whose planet *blew up*?"
"You have a point." Tim gathers the pages and sets them aside. "Maybe this was a bad idea."
"You *think*?" Kon kicks the pile, then drops down on one knee, punching Tim's arm. "C'mon. Let's go do -- *anything*."
"Right behind you."
*
Clark's fingers are a kind of magic. Tim rejects fantasy in favor of possibility and lets himself expect -- more.
*More*, cock and --. He needs, wants, more. All. Even Kryptonese is gendered, masculine-feminine-neuter, but it also includes the inanimate, the ungendered, the overgendered, the group. The pair.
Tim already has a partner. Now he wants -- *this*.
«Please, my friend --» Tim reaches blindly, grazing Clark's shoulder. His skin is *too* tight, wrenched around bone, so overheated that his eyes blur and his mouth clacks dryly, uselessly. «Do it. Do it *all*.»
Clark goes still. The imperative is clean, literal, unmistakable as a knife's blade. It is unencumbered by pronouns, unadorned with any elaboration.
Plain demand.
Tim holds his gaze steady, levelled on Clark's, as his toes dig into the soft folds of the cape. He cannot gentle the need, cannot ask or explain.
«Do it,» he says again. «Do. Fuck-screw-break me. Open.» Adjectives, shorn of their usual declension, torn from any noun, float free of context.
"Tim. Robin. I --" Clark's mouth works and for the first time, his English is -- *accented*. Halting and uncertain.
When Tim sits up, the angle of Clark's fingers inside him shifts. Goes deeper, somehow *wider*. His mouth, already open, *hangs* nearly unhinged and he fights for air.
("In any situation, however apparently dire, you *will* find the necessary resources. You may not recognize them as such at first, but they do exist. You must find them": Thus Batman's training, imprinted deeper than memory, than *marrow*, returns to Tim's mind.)
«I cannot ask anything of you.» Breathless, Tim touches Clark's cheek.
Between them, Clark's cock stands out, engorged, dark.
Blue sky behind Clark, storm-clouds and wildfires in his eyes, tar-dark need between his legs.
Tim feels it all, *confronts* it with all he has -- he, a fragile, barely-competent human -- with himself, his sight, his mouth.
These are his resources, broken down to a child's palette: red cape, blue sky, black need.
«Ask me,» Clark says finally. Tim does not recognize the pronoun, but he locates the verb as the tense of entreaty. A request, beseeching and hardly daring to hope. «I may -- that is, I want to --»
«Want,» Tim echoes.
The word, as he speaks, is both thing, noun, and action, verb. If he adds the companionable prefix, the pronoun of friendship and, yes, *lovers*, the word becomes --.
A reciprocity, an acting thing, a reified action. Neither noun nor verb but *both* of them, and the simplicity, the *foreignness*, makes his mind reel. No language on Earth -- none that *he* knows -- can make that happen.
Perhaps Basque, or Maori.
Tim presses his knees into the soft earth, spreading his legs as widely as they'll go ("my flexibility? of course"), and bears down on Clark's fingers. He repeats the word, newly made, and watches its effect on Clark.
On *Superman*.
Superman's mouth is a red slit, nearly obscene. Or, that is, it *would* be obscene, if he were not -- himself. Superman, Kal.
«Want.»
If he wasn't Superman, this would all be obscene. But he *is* and *here* and Tim licks the curve of his cheek. Superman listens with his entire body, Tim's pulse surrounding him, *crushing* him, urging him deeper.
«(Us-lover-we)-Want. You.» Superman's eyes shine red as the cape, as his mouth, when Tim uses Rao's You.
Superman inhales. Hears and *jerks*, live-wire fast, pumping come out over Tim's stomach and chest.
His chin. Come hot as a grease-fire and Tim moans.
At that, Superman's eyes widen, the storms to fire to *gales*, and his voice is high. "I can't," he says in broken English, "Not --. Not yet."
"Soon?" Tim asks.
Superman's nodding as his fingers push deeper into Tim, thrusting, and his mouth lowers, and --.
It's enough of a promise.
*
Tim appears to be...dating Superman. Sadly, regrettably, that's the very best term for what's going on.
*Dating*. Is not something that should be a possibility, not in this part of Tim's life.
But there is no better word for seeing someone twice, three times, a week, eating together (even if those meals are in far-flung locations, Dubai and Sydney and Amsterdam), having sex. Making --. No.
"There are rules. An *understanding*, you see," Clark says earnestly. "With Lois. With my wife. And --"
Something jagged rakes down Tim's throat. "I see."
If he wants to --. If Clark is to --. If Clark is to fuck him, then.
Lois gets to meet him first.
"Saturday," Tim says when Clark asks when would be good for him. "No. Thursday."
"It's a date," Clark says and --.
It's a date.
*
He modifies Gary Glanz's outfit, tones down the obnoxious grunge-boy edge with fabric softener and fewer piercings. A Flash t-shirt rather than the House of Pain. Clark hugs him when Tim steps off the train, hugs him long and hard, tells him he looks wonderful.
"And what am I supposed to call you?" Tim asks in the elevator. He can't be Gary. He has to be Tim, but he'll be -- another. Timofey Sirin, an owl rather than a duck, Russian immigrant living in Gotham.
"Clark," Clark replies. "It's easier, I wouldn't want --"
"I won't flub my lines."
"No." Clark squeezes his shoulder and kisses his forehead as the door dings and opens. "Of course not."
*
Lois Lane is every bit as terrifying as Tim has steeled himself for. But the terror comes not in her sarcasm, not in the sardonic cast to her face -- he has lived with, worked with, *Bruce*, after all. The terrible unease comes instead from her...*grace*. Her own sense of ease, here in her home, feeding her husband's *boyfriend* eggplant cutlet and tossed greens.
"May I?" Tim reaches for the bottle of Chianti when Lois pours herself another glass. Clark smiles at him over his own glass of apple juice.
Lois replaces the bottle on the sideboard and grins at him. "Nice try, kid."
"Hm."
She stabs him lightly with her butter knife. "Hm, what?"
"Interesting, that's all." Tim withdraws his hand and tilts his head. "I'm old enough to sleep with, but not to drink?"
Lois takes a long, thirsty swallow of her wine. "Pretty much."
Tim should have asked how often they've done this. In the name of preparing, of adequate provisions, he should know how regular an occurrence this -- this *family dinner*, followed by sex -- happens.
He didn't want to know. His failure of nerve is unforgivable.
"Tim's quite the reader," Clark tells Lois, so she questions him about what he's read. Needles him for liking science fiction, blows off his attempts to mention literary fiction -- "*Franzen*? Please, pull the other. Pretentious weasel" -- and gives him a list of American history texts to consult before he can argue about the Civil War with her.
Clark smiles. Clark *keeps* smiling.
When they retire to the living room, when the lights dim and Clark's head bends toward Lois's, when they kiss and Tim waits on the sofa, his terror lessens. There's no good reason *why* that should be, but --. He watches them embrace, watches Lois wriggle her leg between Clark's, and he drinks in the *ease*, the familiarity, they share. The obvious pleasure they take in touching, teasing, *being* with each other.
Watching, observing, has always been a --. Not a refuge so much as a natural state.
Lois withdraws to change. Clark joins Tim on the couch. His skin smells like Chanel Number Five, his mouth is slightly swollen, his hands as warm as ever, and he *pulls* at Tim.
"Thank you," he is saying, into Tim's mouth, against his chest, as he makes short work of Tim's pants, his briefs, as he sucks his way down Tim's shoulder. "Thank you. Oh --"
Tim straddles one of Clark's thighs, falling into the rhythm without letting himself think about it, twining his arms around Clark's neck and pushing back onto his blunt, *hot* thumb.
Everything is moving very fast. Not fast enough.
"Couldn't wait, huh, Kent?" Lois, across the room, and Tim doesn't turn; instead, he watches Clark *see* his wife, watches another, wider smile curve over his face. "Overeager bastard."
"Oh," Clark says and shivers. To Tim, he whispers, "You'll like this."
"Yes," Lois says, and she's right behind them now, two fingers on Tim's shoulders, nails digging in. "You're from Gotham. I think you'll appreciate --"
Not the Bat, Tim thinks, please not --. He turns slowly. Then quickly, Clark's hands on his waist, turning him all the way around, to face --. To look down, to take in --.
Nightwing.
"It's one of Clark's favorites," she adds and the mask is a replica, but the costume. The costume is authentic, stretched over her small, high breasts, exactly right and wrong simultaneously. Tim shudders, twists, his eyes trying to close, but Clark squeezes him, slides him lower in his lap.
Chuckles in Tim's ear as he penetrates him again. Index finger this time, thrusting heat up Tim's body, out his mouth, and Lois sinks to her knees, sardonic smile thinning to a smirk, then widening. Into an *O*, as she leans forward, hands on Tim's knees, and --.
Her mouth is much smaller than Clark's. Of course. And not nearly as *warm*, but Tim's body responds all the same. A groan he loathes escapes his mouth, and Clark is sucking on his ear, telling him how *wonderful* it-he-she looks, *they* look, and all the while, his finger pushes deeper, faster.
Clark matches the rhythm of Lois's mouth. They've practiced. This is familiar.
And Tim twists and pushes and falls *between* them, shuddering and sweating, urged on. Encouraged, devoured.
English is all too adequate. Clark and Lois are a *we*, a *they*, and Tim is --. Discrete, temporary.
Having licked Tim clean, licked Tim from Lois's mouth, Clark carries him to the bedroom.
Tim's not sure what happens now, except that there is -- mutuality? Some kind of reciprocation needs to be made. He reaches for Lois, touching her left breast, molding his palm to it, and does not think of Stephanie. Ariana. Anyone.
Clark slides down Lois's body and Lois clutches at Tim's hand, holds it in place. "Harder --"
He pinches her nipple through the Nightwing fabric, then harder again, as she writhes and clamps her legs around Clark's head. When she comes, she pushes Tim away. It could be an unconscious muscle seizure.
"Fuck me, Kent." Her voice is strained, *ragged*, and she turns to look at Tim briefly as Clark rises and settles over her.
Her eyes are unreadable. Intent, *dark*, and Tim returns the look. Until Clark pets his hip, beaming, then leans down to kiss her.
There is, Tim finds, a kind of magnificence in this primal scene: he bent over her, their faces drawn tight, an identical rictus of pleasure that belongs to them alone. Her hands on his shoulders, her hips rolling to meet his thrusts, and his lips on her throat, whispering in the pauses between her cries.
He enters her and she pushes him. There are vague notions, distant and inconsequential as gnats, at the back of Tim's head -- the mission, loyalty, duty, obligation.
This is just, simply and finally, Love. He and she, a matched pair. It's brighter than anything.
They're showing it to him.
He turns his head and he looks right at *Tim* and he's saying Tim's name as he fucks his wife, and Lois's hand drops, reaches out to graze Tim's knee, and --. It's too much, rolling over to meet them, getting drawn into the heat rising off them. He's sweating and trembling and she's kissing him while he touches him, the bed rocking against the wall, crushing them together.
And pronouns are ridiculous, inappropriate, *measly* things.
Or, perhaps, pronouns are fine, and it's *Tim* who fails to understand.
*
Lois leaves in the night for Blessed, Idaho, where a militia is massing.
Tim goes back to sleep, waking again when the curtains open and Superman is there, stripping off his costume, kissing him.
"Morning," Tim mumbles. There is a shower, a change into a spare pair of Lois's jeans and a Daily Planet softball team jersey, before he joins Su--*Clark* in the kitchen.
"Lois said to say goodbye," Clark says. "We weren't sure if you --."
Tim pours himself the last of the coffee. "She didn't...like me."
"No, no. Of course she did --" Clark gnaws at his lip. "She found you *very* attractive."
"So I gathered." He has four bitemarks on his thighs and chest, too small to be Clark's. They shone like coals under the shower's water. Tim shifts his weight and uncrosses his arms. He shivers, once, as Clark runs his hands down Tim's hips. Cups the hollows at the sides of his buttocks. "That, however, has nothing to do --"
Tim stops. Is stopped, by the look on Clark's face, his narrowed eyes, the entire *tilt* of his body imploring and beseeching.
«I am at a loss,» Clark says.
«As am I,» Tim replies.
"You've been using an...archaic dialect," Clark says. "Kryptonese rather than..."
"Not Kryptonian. Yes." Tim opens and closes his hands. "The Eradicator --"
"Is something of a fascist." Clark's lack of smile is entirely rueful.
"Indeed. But his -- its files. Are quite complete."
Clark rubs his hands over his face. "When I first learned the language, it was --"
"Kitchen Kryptonian," Tim suggests and Clark nods. "Appropriate for a child."
Clark nods again and shrugs. "Exactly."
"You're not --" Tim smiles, feeling his face tighten. "Well. You know."
Hand on Tim's shoulder, then his neck, warm open palm, Clark says, "Tell me. I like --"
"To hear me think, yes." Tim tilts his head into Clark's hand and lets his eyes close briefly. "You're not a child."
"And you never got to be." Clark's fingers tighten in Tim's hair. He might well be telling the truth.
"So," Tim says and steps away. "Did I get the all-clear?"
Clark frowns at that, mouth falling, eyes drooping. "Yes. But, Tim, I --"
Tim finishes his coffee. "Mission accomplished, then."
*
He'd expected annihilation. He did not *wish* for it, nor, really, seek it out, but getting --. Getting fucked by Superman: Surely, that would *result* in annihilation.
Tim stirs from sleep. It's the next day, the Titans will be wondering where he is, and --.
Frankly, he'd like to know that, too. He is outside, at the entrance to a jungle. This is not Belize.
This might not be Earth. The grass is a shade of green he's seen only on jewels, clutched by Catwoman, and the sky is at once too far away and too *heavy* to be real. The clouds are lavender, but the sun is high, red, in the sky.
When he rolls over, his hand hits a wall. An invisible one...? He crouches next to it and discerns the faint outlines of his own face.
A glass wall.
«Here,» Clark says behind him and hands Tim a swollen, yellow fruit he's never seen before. «As close to home as we get.»
The domestic *we*, found in late Kryptonian, noted first in Brainiac's files about --.
"Kandor," Tim says. And Clark beams.
[end]
Title from Paul Celan:
THE ETERNITIES struck
at his face and
past it,
slowly a conflagration extinguished
all candled things,
a green, not of this place,
with down covered the chin
of the rock which the orphans
buried and
buried again. (1970)
Series: The Metaphysics of Presence #2 ( #1)
Fandom: DCU (early TT v.3, Lewis-era ROBIN, c.#111)
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Still never mine.
Characters: Superman, Tim, Batman, Kon, Cassie, Lois. Expect various non-Euclidean combinations thereof.
Summary: If you lived here, you'd be home by now.
Warning: Roving POV and linguistic pornography.
Notes: Epigraph from Buber, I and Thou. Thanks to all those who read an early draft, particularly Te, Jack, Petra and Jubilancy, and to the ever-patient and inspirational G., who beta'd. Follows "Reform it altogether", but can probably be read alone.
"The longing for relation is primary, the cupped hand into which the being that confronts us nestles; and the relation to that, which is a wordless anticipation of saying You, comes second."
The Cave's files maintain that whatever the extent of Superman's powers (and the files' author remains doubtful that those powers have yet to be adequately described), one thing is certain. All those powers are dwarfed in scope and scale by the alien's reliance on...well, on the milk of human kindness, if one wants to put a sentimental and proverbial cast on the situation.
Tim first read this argument before he received his suit. *After* he'd stolen Jason's, but well before he earned his own. When he was something like a child, creeping through the Cave, studying what it meant to be a hero.
He doesn't know if Jason ever met Superman; he suspects so, but there's no way to ask.
*How*, exactly, would he ask? He doesn't know *whom* he'd ask, let alone what words he would use.
Tim's thoughts have been turning back along the paths of memory more and more often lately. That skinny boy he was, reading and learning with the eagerness of...not a hero. A *student*, an addict, an ignorant child.
This is not nostalgia, but reevaluation. Memories are as fluid as fantasy, and his revisiting the past has nothing to do with *missing* it (his mother) and everything to do with learning more. Analyzing what he could not have understood *then*, what he may yet come to know *now*.
*
Kon is unhappy with Tim. That much is clear. When Tim enters the Tower, late on Saturday morning, through the main room, Kon yells, "Well, look who's here! Nice of you to join us, man."
From the couch, Cassie shushes him. Bart laughs and waves.
Tim ignores Kon's continued mutters and addresses Vic. "Sorry about this, but --"
"No worries," Vic says and shoos Gar-the-mynah off his shoulder. "Got your message."
"Good," Tim says and makes for the stairs to the dorm. "Thanks."
He gets to the top of the flight before Kon flies past him, jostling his shoulder. He blocks the hallway for a moment before he lets Tim pass and unlock his door.
"We really could've used you last night." Kon pushes into the room.
"I don't see why," Tim says and unzips his backpack to start unpacking. "A supercharged toddler opening chronal vortices sounds tailor-made for you and Cassie and Bart. I would have been in the way."
Grabbing the pile of clean laundry and spare cape from Tim, Kon shakes his head furiously. "No way! Never!"
Tim cocks his head. "Really?"
"Really, really. It was *sick*, man." Kon kicks open the closet door and tosses the clothes inside. "Bart was running all over the place and --"
Tim empties his shaving kit, then goes to put the clean underwear away. "That is what Bart does."
"Different. He totally wasn't listening --"
"Also what he does."
Kon jabs Tim's shoulder, three times, before saying, "And Cassie was throwing that lasso and I kept *hitting* the bastard and --"
Tim closes the dresser drawer and leans against it. "Sounds like a typical night to me."
"But you weren't *there*," Kon says, sounding simultaneously impatient and bewildered.
"No. Isn't that what we're talking about?"
Kon grimaces, then shakes his head. "*Exactly*."
"Exactly -- what?" Squinting at Kon, Tim tries to find the -- often distant, always twisted -- logic. "Go over that again."
"You said it was typical. A typical night. *Not* typical --" Kon paces the length of Tim's room in a little under four seconds. His shoulders swing like the farmboy he has to pretend to be. "Because *you* weren't here."
If there is logic to be found anywhere in this conversation, it's an absurdly circular one. Tim sighs. "I -- I don't know what to say."
"Jeez, *dude*." Kon rolls off the wall and peers at Tim. The bridge of his nose sports two red divots where his glasses pinch the skin. He got another haircut; the skin along his hairline is pale, painfully so, newly exposed. Tim curls his fingers into loose fists. He wouldn't *touch*, but -- caution. Caution can never be overdone. "Say you're sorry, maybe?"
Sitting on the edge of his desk, Tim draws a deep breath. "Um. I'm sorry I missed something that I wouldn't have been any help with?"
Kon *looks* at him, mouth open, eyes wide, frozen. Not a deer -- a *buffalo* in headlights. Looming over Tim, and he seems to have grown another inch and a half. "You don't get it, do you?"
"No," Tim replies. It feels like a confession. "I --. No."
Kon looks exactly like Tim feels. Baffled, even -- flabbergasted.
"Right. Well." Kon makes a show of checking his watch. His voice is flat, as close to affectless as he can get. "Wow. My, look at the time. I better get going."
They don't have anything scheduled for three hours.
*
Tim knows all too well the difference between fantasy and possibility. They diverge just outside the boundary of one's own skin, and never the twain -- et cetera.
Fantasy lives *inside* and cannot be exposed to the air. To reality.
Possibility, however, exists in the space between you and the world. What *might* happen hovers around you. On occasion, it assumes form and becomes reality.
The definition of insanity, of course, is the failure to distinguish the two. Lunatics like Joker, Two-Face, Scarecrow cannot accept that their fantasies cannot become real. Their possibilities stew in the realm of fantasy, boil over in their minds, get loose and wreak havoc.
From this perspective, then, Tim's love for --. No. Tim's *attraction to* Kon is private, fantastical, unreal. Impossible.
His love is real. His attraction is --. Not.
Every weekend, it seems as if Kon has thickened just that much more. Mrs. Kent's cooking, combined with good hard work and an accelerated, mysterious maturation process, has filled him out admirably. Week to week, he might become a stranger, but in Tim's mind, he is forever familiar. Whatever his outward appearance, he's *Kon*. He'll always be taller, louder, *bigger*. Himself, with hands too big for his wrists and sun-wrinkles nearly invisible around his eyes, rough easy voice and warm, sudden touch.
That touch is fraternal. Not that Tim's understanding of "fraternal" is anything other than -- literal, dictionary-derived, semantic. Dick has done his best, over the years, on and off, to make that understanding something more -- immediate. Physical.
The fact that those efforts have resulted in -- in *this*, Tim's hand shoved down his briefs, his face turned to the wall, tongue in his teeth and fingernails raking his sac.
Well.
That's not Dick's fault any more than it is Kon's. Attraction is private, held in the back of his constricting throat, squeezed in the palm of his hand, and neither of them needs to *know* about it.
"Beautiful."
Tim's backbone unfolds, jerks open, and what he'd thought -- hoped -- was a gust off the Bay through his open window resolves into --.
Superman.
Fog and dew twinkling in his hair, across his cheek, and his face is wide, remote, as the moon. His cape twists and flutters, nearly as loud as Tim's thudding pulse.
Tim blinks. Opens his eyes to find Superman kneeling next to his bed, one large, warm hand pushing over Tim's thigh, pulling down his briefs, to join Tim's own -- cramped, clawed, *arthritic* hand around his --.
"Uhhk --" Tim's mouth works uselessly against Superman's chin, his lips, as he shoves into the warm grip and the orgasm shakes out of him.
"Oh..." Superman kisses Tim's mouth, his cheek and throat, stroking out the last shuddering jolts of pleasure. When Tim pulls away, Superman smiles at him and pats his shoulder. "Oh, *my*."
Tim's room in the Tower is bare as a cell. White cement walls and standard-issue pale-wood furniture, nothing to notice, nothing to *see*. But Superman fills it with a blaze of color, the scent of *air* and reckless winds, and Tim. Tim doesn't --.
"I don't," he works out, aloud, lowering his eyes from the blaze of Superman's smile. "Know what to say."
Superman doesn't reply. He continues to smile, never stops -- *can* he stop? -- as he lifts his hand to his mouth and sucks it clean. Tim's hips pump twice, three times, at the sudden cold *absence* of touch before he can control himself.
In Tim's dazed, startled *loss* of thought, he thinks that Superman's tongue is as red as his cape. He shivers and the smile *broadens*.
"Here. What are you doing -- *here*?" Tim pushes up onto his elbow as Superman rises off his knees, plants one in the curve of Tim's waist, and lowers himself onto the bed.
"Would you believe --" Superman's breath is ozone and *Tim*, working warmly into Tim's mouth. "Guest lecture?"
Gotham is one thing; Superman doesn't fit there, stands out bright and...*alien* against grime and shadows. But the Tower is -- in its clean, angular plainness, it's even *less* a place for him. For this.
His blue jersey, stretched over shoulders horizon-wide, and *eyes*, and Tim is *lost*.
"Ah," Tim says and Superman's hair is damp, silky, under his hands. "Of course."
*If you lived here, you'd be home by now*: His mother used to say that on the drive home from excursions into the city. When they got stuck in traffic, when the line of brake-lights stretched like an endless necklace ahead of them. Tim never knew *why* she said that, only that she did it to bother his father, that it worked, but the phrase comes to him now.
Superman doesn't fit anywhere. He makes the Earth his home. Thesis, antithesis, and the synthesis is -- this. The startling beauty of it all.
*
Clark knows full well that he does not need an *excuse* to meet with Robin. It is, however, at once expedient and useful to use this visit to San Francisco to touch base. Dressed as a civilian, he takes Robin to a small bistro on the outskirts of gentrifying Oakland.
He would like to cover the basic issues. The status of their respective jobs, their teams. The mission.
Robin is nothing but consummately professional. Clark cannot help but treat him as a colleague; the difference in their ages is, perhaps, regrettable, but it need not be an obstacle.
"You're doing very good work," Clark tells Robin. "With the Titans."
"I don't know about that." Robin sets down his fork with a precise 'tink'. "We're still getting the hang of it."
"Oh?"
Clark likes to hear Robin talk. Likes to hear his *thoughts* as they occur and gain form. The process is never hesitant, but it does take time, time in which Clark can admire its stages. Like clouds massing on the horizon, gathering and tripling in size, pale light solidifying into castles and keeps, that process is visible *on* Robin. Throughout him, in gestures and expressions as much as in words.
Robin sips his glass of milk, then cleans his upper lip quickly with the tip of his pink, quick tongue. "In a very real sense, we are modeling our group on yours."
"I don't have --" Clark spreads his hands. "There's just me and Kara."
"The JLA."
"Oh."
Robin rearranges his cape. "And Kon --. Conner. Don't forget him."
"Of course not." Conner is taking Clark's visit with his usual bravado and twitchy *noise*. Clark bites the corner of his lip and adds, "You were saying...?"
Robin's hand blurs as he waves it, green and fast. "The model *is* healthy. To a certain extent. But I have come to believe, recently, that --"
Clark wonders if Robin knows that he savors the pauses in his speech, that his mouth and tongue form, *corporealize*, the commas with humid breath. Sweet, milk-stained breath.
No, he can't realize that. Although --. If anyone can, it would be Robin.
"Sorry?" Clark exaggerates the action of shaking himself back to attention.
Robin smiles for the briefest moment. "If you'd prefer --"
"No. No, please --" Clark remembers just in time to grasp Robin's wrist with only minimal -- *human* -- pressure. "Continue."
"In sum? We are..." Robin frowns, the top edge of his mask wrinkling minutely. "We are not you."
Clark swallows. "I don't think that anyone's asking you to --"
"I never suggested that was the case."
"Oh. Oh, but --" Clark loosens his tie, wrenching it a little too hard, and gives Robin a weak grin. "I'm afraid I don't follow."
"Nothing to follow," Robin says flatly. As his shoulders tuck in, his cape shifts closed with a sigh that Clark *must* be imagining.
"I want --" In his eagerness to grasp Robin's hand again, Clark knocks over both their glasses. "Oh, *Lord*. I apologize --"
"It's waterproof," Robin says gently. He holds up his arm, where the water is already beading off the gauntlet.
"Of course it is," Clark says. More to himself than to Robin.
Whenever possible, Clark prefers not to brood. He's no good at it -- except, of course, when he's all too good at it -- and there is, as his mother likes to point out, no percentage in it. So when the meal is finished, he offers Robin his hand and shakes it firmly.
"I'll see you --" he starts to say.
Robin's smile is an angle, a tilt, not a smile. "I'm not due back home until tomorrow morning."
An offer, perhaps, expressed in only the most economical, factual terms.
"Ah?" Clark manages to wait until they're out of the restaurant, in the half-empty parking lot, before wrapping his arm around Robin's waist and lifting into the sky. Robin settles against his hip, arms looped around Clark's neck and head bent against the wind, the angle of his smile listing acutely until it resembles *pleasure*.
The nearest solitary spot is in Belize, a stretch of soft volcanic sand abutting the wall of a jungle. It is an animal reserve -- Clark helped build the fences, tries *still* not to think about saving indigenous species while indigenous *people* starve -- and relatively quiet.
Robin -- Tim? -- is relaxing incrementally, pushing into Clark's kiss, opening sweetly, hands gentle and insistent all at once. His mask is tucked into his belt, so he may be Tim.
Clark has never believed in masks. The determined squint on the boy's face is all Robin, but his sighs and rocking hips are -- both.
"Robin." Clark runs the tip of his tongue along the curve of Robin's upper lip. The skin there is soft, plump with near-bruises, tiny lacerations fresh with blood and heat. "Tim, I. I would --"
Robin's thighs flex around Clark's legs as he sighs. "What?"
"I would," Clark says and feels Robin's ribs spread, then deflate. He moves his nose and mouth down the sweat-slick skin of Robin's neck. "I would like, very much. To penetrate you."
He's glad for the mask's absence; now he can see the squint widen into startled pleasure, blue eyes wheeling for a moment before the gaze fastens again. Robin's mouth opens.
"I --. Yes." His head falls back when Clark's thumb runs lightly down his cleft. "Oh?"
It is very difficult to believe that Tim hasn't done...this. Any of this. He stares dazedly at the sky, pushing back against Clark's hand, tongue darting at the corners of his lips. The *sounds* he makes, unnerved and ragged, as his hips swivel and his hands slide off Clark's arm, then grasp again. The flush coming up over his cheeks might be sunburn. Clark needs to remember to keep track of --.
Time. But he *can't*, not with Robin mouthing the side of his neck and pushing back, down, *on* his thumb, his lashes fluttering hummingbird-fast, his sighs ripping out, high and sweet.
"More. *More* --" Robin leans forward, lifting off Clark, sliding back down -- the *pressure* and the heat inside of him, so much banked and secret, *private* -- and the long muscles on his thighs tighten, stand out. "Harder."
"Yes," Clark says and kisses him, sucking his lower lip and twisting his hand until he's thrusting faster, until Robin is shaking against him, whimpering and pulling at Clark's hair. "Yes, oh --"
"I want --" Robin falls back, almost to the sand, before Clark catches him. His penis shudders and *jabs* at the empty air until Clark strokes him, gently at first. "*Superman*."
"Right here, always here --" *Declarations* pool together with the heat in Clark's groin, strange sounds and promises that coil upward, into his mouth, fast gyres of sparks over bonfires. "Yes, yes --"
Robin twists, at the waist, his neck, his knees, until he's upright again and shuddering and *touching* Clark's own -- touching him with fast, *terrible*-beautiful strokes, his eyes on Clark's face as he fucks forward, then back, and Clark's mouth is filled, his heart is *bursting*, he --.
"Is this --? Am I what --?" Robin shakes his head and goes still. Not still; *hard* and motionless for an unbearable moment. All except his hand, which tightens on Clark and *pulls*, until Clark starts to come three seconds after Robin yowls and contorts and spills hot and thick over Clark's hand.
"Yes," Clark replies. Later, honestly. "Yes."
*
These days, Cassie looks more beautiful than ever. Bart says it's the lasso. Tim, however, attributes her new glow to Kon's renewed attentions. He's always around her, always *near* her, as close as possible. Whether they're at the dining table, in the conference room, fighting a metahuman villain on the streets of Portland, Oregon, Kon is *there*. And near.
They present a fascinating tableau, really.
She'll swat him playfully, wriggle away just far enough to be tugged back, wrestle him if he gets too forward. Throughout, she never manages to hide her smile, not completely.
"Bizarre mating rituals," Bart says as he crashes down next to Tim on the couch, as Kon chases Cassie out of the room, threatening to steal her lasso. "Do you get it? I don't get it!"
Gar transforms into a leering goat, sporting a swollen penis and testicles worthy of a statue of *Pan*. "I'll show you some mating rituals --"
"Ew!" Bart twists toward Tim, hiding his face and kicking out his leg. "Gross, go *away*!"
Tim pats Bart's back gently. "There, there." He glances at Gar, who's now a panting Rottweiler. "Down, boy."
When Gar's gone, nipping at Raven's heels as she heads for the kitchen, Bart peeks out. "Why's he mad at you?"
Tim sets his book aside. "Who, Gar?"
Rolling his eyes, Bart kicks Tim. "Kon."
"Oh. Is he?" Tim keeps his tone as mild as he can. "Mad at me?"
"Shyeah!" Bart sighs as he pulls his knees up to his chest and squirms into the corner of the couch. "He's acting all --"
Tim lifts one eyebrow. "Bitchy?"
Bart laughs -- the sound is more a *bark*, shocked and pleased and *sudden*. "He *is*!"
"Yes," Tim says. "I --. Maybe it's hormones."
Considering that, Bart chews his lower lip and jiggles his left foot. "Eww. Probably, yeah."
*
There ought to be a *word* that captures this -- standing in full costume in the Cave, before the console, waiting. With his briefs sticky and the ache of Superman's mouth imprinted all over his skin.
This is neither right nor wrong. This is *beyond* that. Possibly *behind* that, above that.
"Robin. Report."
The word would be related to...awful, awe-full, awesome, beautiful. Everything is beautiful when Superman sees it. Touches it.
Tongues it.
Robin would sway on his feet at that thought, joined with Batman's silent impatience, but he has far too much control. Instead, he sways inside, a twitch and float, as if what really counts about him is still aloft, still flying.
Behind the mask, he blinks once. "Last night was...quiet. There may, or may not, be a shipment of Bialyan guns coming in to the East End tonight."
"You've alerted Catwoman."
Batman probably expects him to bristle at that. Her territoriality has been a sticking point between them in the past, as has Batman's...tolerance of her activities.
Personal relationships, whatever their tenor, Robin firmly believes (must believe), have no place interfering in the mission.
So he neither bristles nor thinks about the stickiness between his legs. Rather, Robin simply nods. "I sent word through the usual channels."
"And Dead Johnny --" Batman says.
"-- is being arraigned tomorrow morning. I have a trig test second period, but --"
"You'll be there."
Robin nods again. "The courthouse's ductwork is very...accommodating."
"An hour on the bars, I think," Batman tells him when the report is complete. "Your flexibility is --"
"More than adequate," Robin replies. He takes his seat at a satellite terminal to the side of the main console. His right leg over Superman's shoulder, the left wrapped tightly around Superman's thigh, and he'd bent backward, into the air, his mouth and...*ass* filled with heat. Superman's mouth, his fingers.
Yes, he's very flexible.
"Is it now?" Batman asks mildly.
"Yes." Robin toggles the security screens from the Tower in San Francisco. "It is."
They work in silence for over an hour. Batman reviews toxicology reports on Dead Johnny's female victims, cross-referencing them with the Cave's database. Robin studies outbound traffic from Bialyan airspace while copying files on the Kryptonese language.
He concentrates easily, thoroughly. He is slightly warmer than usual beneath the uniform, a thin layer of sweat dampening his undershirt. His nipples are sore, stinging slightly whenever he moves and they brush against the undershirt's fabric. Such discomfort, however, is nothing compared to the injuries sustained on a typical night. Nothing, that is, except...*reassuring*. His body is stimulated, responsive, *alive*.
Arriving at the Cave in this state only heightens the pleasurable ache.
Awful, awe-ful. "Beautiful," Superman had murmured, barely audible, sensation over sense.
Robin has considered whether he is, perhaps, being terribly adolescent about this situation. The fact remains that Robin is, in a word, *thrilled*. He is warm, tingling, here in the chilly, silent, *dark* Cave.
"Show me," Batman says, having stacked the reports into a perfect pile.
"My flexibility? Of course." Robin stretches for a few moments, then tilts backward until his palms are eighteen inches from his heels, his torso bowed upward. His cape folds and pools in the gap.
After forty seconds, Robin kicks up into a handstand and holds the pose.
He will never have Dick's grace, but he has succeeded in folding, extending, *controlling* his body to an admirable degree.
"Hm." Batman circles him and Robin feels the bones in his hands press against the gauntlets. "Drop your right leg."
He complies. He can hold this standing split for forty-five seconds; after that, the muscles in his legs start to twitch and complain.
Batman's gaze is nothing like Superman's. When Superman looks at you, you are invited. *Welcomed* into hints of a better world. You are admired.
When Batman studies you, you go still and reach within yourself for yet more control.
That Robin is far more...*at home* here, under the fluorescent lights and stalactites, does not mean that he is not...beautiful-invited-afire.
He is both, and all, and thrilled.
"Your weight is canting to the left," Batman says at last.
Robin points his toes inside his left boot and sweeps it down to the floor. "But my balance is holding well."
"Work on that."
Robin nods. Again. "Of course."
*
"Sorry," Kon says loudly, insincerely, as he slings his arm around Bart's shoulders. "Speedfreaks only on this trip."
Bart's grinning like a Christmas commercial. "We're gonna beat the record!"
"Good luck, then." Tim sits back down. He doesn't bother asking what record they're challenging.
"Thanks!" Bart yells before they're gone.
*
He downloads the necessary materials -- three grammars provided by the Eradicator, Batman's own notes, both the decade-old pages scanned in at a later date and the current, computerized ones, as well as some work by various staffers from the STAR linguistics team -- and does not bother to cover his tracks. Batman has had Robin learn Navajo, Urdu, and Basque; if he questions Tim's study of Kryptonese, he won't get very far.
He tells himself he's doing it for Kon, that Kon needs a tutor, a grounding in the other-best part of himself. Cows and cornfields can only go so far.
If he misses Kon, if this brings them back together, then...that will be good, too.
But the language is complex in a way that defeats even Tim's analytical mind. For a society that cast off mysticism in favor of science, the language is deplorably (admirably?)...*animistic*. Light is particle and wave, but those particles spin, dance, whirligig and *samba* through fourteen inflections.
The pronouns name the self, the other, and...nearly everything in between. There is *I*, *you*, and *it*, but there are also *you*s that would like to be considered as *it*s, for a variety of reasons. Motivation, intent, is captured in both prefixes and the accent on the ending. There are, moreover, *it*s that aspire to self, both reasonably and ridiculously. An *I* that is born through marriage, another through funeral ceremonies.
A *we* that may only be used within the speaker's house, another that was only heard at public gatherings.
Studying Kryptonese makes him feel like he's been drugged. Something soporific and hallucinogenic, pulsing through his system, distracting his concentration. *Playing* with his concentration, shattering it into fractal shards that go dendritic and emotive.
Kryptonese is a language of emotion, rigorously expressed in poetry. Learning it is...like painting the sunset with cinders and ash. Dancing without legs while blindfolded. Fighting crime without superpowers.
Tim used to think about heroes all the time. Before his mother died, and after, and for a long time since.
He had considered Batman a hero for longer than Bart and Kon have been *alive*. He regarded the Bat as a personal demon for even longer than that.
These days, he is --. He believes --.
No.
When Stephanie was shown the Cave -- and he'll use the passive voice, because it wasn't her fault, this has nothing to do with her -- the nightmares ceased. The belief in heroes vanished with them.
He does not miss those days. Revisiting them, however, brings up memories that taste like peanut-brittle and hospital-antiseptic, waiting rooms and airports.
All heroes are orphans, to some extent. Superman and Dick and Bruce and Stephanie. Kon, Bart.
Tim studies harder.
He needs a better way to say what he means.
*
He needs a better word than hero.
*
"Why so glum, chum?" Kon has one leg hooked over the window sill, Tim's personal proximity alarm in his outstretched hand.
"Don't call me that." Tim rubs his eyes and closes his notebook. "How'd you get in here?"
"What, here?" Kon knocks his fist on the window and grins. "Little thing I like to call tactile TK..."
Tim settles for throwing an old wad of Kleenex; it lands at the bottom point of the S on Kon's chest. "Thought you'd forgotten about that."
"TTK? Never, my small and tense friend. Never forget the strange, neurologically-implanted power that has made me what I am today. X-ray vision and ice-breath may come and go -- I hope they don't go, because X-ray's everything you ever dreamed and *more* -- but I remain stout, loyal, and true to the humble TTK." Kon flops down on Tim's bed and kicks him lightly in the shin. "How'd that sound? Got an interview with Teen People next week."
"I wondered whence the preachiness," Tim says.
Kon grabs his crotch and smirks. "Whence this, buddy."
"Did you want something?"
"Yeah. *You*." Kon flings out his arms. "It's ninja night downstairs, all is quiet at Alcatraz, Bart's gone *loco* with the popcorn toppings, and you're up here doing...what? *Homework*?"
Yes, any day now, Grieve High will add Kryptonese to the curriculum, right after Mandarin and Spanish. Tim stretches, then rests his fingertips on the edge of his notebook. "Don't you have any?"
"Probably," Kon admits. He sits up suddenly and wrestles Tim into a headlock. The notebook slides to the floor, spilling his flash-cards. "But it's the weekend, the kung-fu is calling, and --"
"Thought it was ninjas." Tim wriggles free. Kon's embrace is almost as warm as Clark's. Almost.
"Like Hollywood cares." Kon plants a loud, wet kiss on Tim's head and pulls away. "Come *on*, man."
When Tim swallows, he can nearly feel the scrape and pulse of Krypton's consonants in his throat. On the back of his tongue. "I'll be down in a minute."
"Nice try. Nuh-*uh*." Kon shakes his head. "What is *up* with you?"
"What are you talking about?" Tim leans over to gather his flash-cards, but Kon hauls him back upright.
Kon's hands circle vaguely in the space between them. "You're...you're not *here* lately."
If we lived here, we'd be home by now. Tim presses his tongue back against his soft palate. "Busy."
Snorting, Kon falls back onto the bed again. "Miss you."
"Mmm," Tim says. "It's --. Mutual."
Kon is spread over his bed, *Tim's* bed, legs akimbo, arms under his head. His t-shirt rides up three and a quarter inches from the waistband of his jeans. There are *bars* of muscle beneath the skin, a fine, narrow cloud of hair running down from his navel.
He has a *navel*. Crafted in a test-tube, but --.
"Like what you see?" Kon runs his hands up his shirt, showily, ridiculously, a burlesque of...burlesque, pinching his nipples and making a pornographic face.
Tim pinches the bridge of his nose. "Let's go watch the movie."
*
Clark believes that Gotham, as a place, as an *experience*, encourages disguise. The city is old enough, adorned over centuries of life, that it's not hard to think of it as a crone, brightly made-up and disturbingly flirtatious.
It certainly does not *discourage* costume and necessary deception. Bruce alone is proof of that. If he'd grown up in Metropolis, would he be...himself? Surely not.
And such deception is worth it when Tim turns the corner from his bus stop and sees Clark. In narrow glasses that Lois calls metrosexual and a dove-gray dress shirt woven with...spandex? Some unnatural fiber that makes the fabric cling uncomfortably to Clark's skin.
"Interesting," Tim says and shifts his backpack to his other shoulder. He shades his eyes against the sun and appears to take a longer look. "You --. Hello."
"I hoped I could take you to dinner." The man Clark is posing as would have his hands in his pockets, so he does so. "If you're not --"
The sun may be in Tim's eyes, but that means that his swallow, the tendons in his neck, are all the more visible. "My father --"
"Ah." Clark relieves Tim of the backpack and grants himself one touch, just his index finger, down the hollow at the nape of Tim's neck. "I'm looking forward to meeting him."
Tim's pulse accelerates. His breath sounds sharp as he exhales. "I don't --." One glance at Clark and the tension in his shoulders does not ease so much as shift lower, into his hands. "All right."
It amuses Tim to tell his parents that Clark is a journalism teacher named Carl Krummett. Clark's not entirely sure why he finds this amusing, but anything that helps him...relax, is welcome.
Jack Drake resembles the man Bruce has described to Clark, genteelly gone to seed. He's older, *grayer* in the face and hair, than Clark had expected. Effortlessly kind, however, and his wife --. Dana seems to adore Tim.
Tim's heartbeat remains rabbit-fast throughout the meal, yet -- and Clark both admires and worries about this -- he gives no sign of being anything other than -- what he looks like.
A teenager, with loving parents, embarrassed by his teacher's presence, comfortable at home. The sweat yoking across his back, nestling in his shoulder-blades, is, of course, perceptible only to Clark.
He'll lick it up later, apologize and tease, and --.
"Thank you," he says to Dana as she hands him a cup of decaffeinated coffee. "Your hospitality is -- wonderful."
Her smile reminds Clark of Ron Troupe's, pleased and shy, brighter than she knows. "It's just good to hear such glowing reports about Tim."
"Dana --" Tim shifts and kicks the leg of his chair.
"You shush," she tells him and Tim ducks his head. Smiles, and only Clark can see.
"Tim's always tested well," Jack Drake tells Clark when Tim and Dana retire to the kitchen. "But in and out of school like he's been --"
"There's no hint of problems," Clark assures him.
"I blame myself," Drake says. "We --. Well."
The hair on the back of Drake's hand is silvered, his knuckles smooth and round. He played lacrosse and football in college; Clark doubts Tim will ever reach his father's *size*. His mother must have been a delicately-boned woman.
"He's very well-adjusted," Clark says and Drake meets his eye.
His smile is full of pride as well as doubt. "Good to know," he says gruffly.
Tim fits here, but he does not belong.
*
There are places where they find some measure of privacy. This pansexual coffee-house in the back streets of Amsterdam is one of those places.
"It occurs to me --" Tim starts, then pauses. Clark is listening closely, tilting toward him as he runs his hands lightly up and down Tim's arms. He smiles encouragingly. "We'll never be --"
It is neither an exaggeration nor a cliche to observe that Clark's face *falls* when he hears the negative.
Tim clears his throat. "I mean to say --. That is, we are --"
Clark has closed his eyes. "I'm sorry."
"I haven't said anything."
"Nevertheless." Clark opens his eyes. "Please. Go on."
On the hard pine bench, Tim shifts and settles. He cannot lie to *Superman* -- but etiquette, civility, simple human *kindness*, all encourage a certain deception as necessary. "Never mind." He waves his free hand. "I've lost it now."
Clark takes that hand. "You were -- pardon me if I'm wrong -- going to observe that we'll never be --" He kisses Tim's palm. The heat of it spirals through Tim's body, whirls around the center. "Equals? Peers. Something along those lines."
Clark's gaze is steady, his grasp firm, and yet --. And yet. Tim wants to rock back, dodge an absent blow, seek shelter from the storm.
"Yes," he says finally. No lies; Superman is his own E-M field, disrupting all deception and mendacity.
"You know that I don't agree," Clark says quietly.
Tim's fingers curl. "Yes."
"That sounded like regret," Clark says and smiles. "In your voice just now."
"It wass," Tim says.
"Regret for the content or for the --." He tilts his head. "The fact that I guessed correctly?"
It's too easy to forget that Clark is a reporter, attuned to subtlety, accustomed to difficult questions. Tim passes his hand over his face, then coughs lightly. Clark is waiting, always waiting, ever-hopeful.
Tim doesn't know what to say. And then the thought gathers in his mouth, forms itself into sound, and he says, «I cannot deceive you, my friend.»
The *I* of companionship, echoed and underscored by the closing epithet.
Clark's eyes widen shockily, blue over throbbing *heat*, as he yanks Tim forward, across the table.
Tim falls, is caught, goes dizzy. All at once, as the table's pushed out of the way and he confronts...*Clark*. This is the blow, the wind, the *storm* he'd feared a moment ago -- but there is nothing to fear, even less to resist. Within the wind, he is flying, Clark's kiss welcoming and widening. Catching him up, enfolding him.
«Yes. A bounteous gratitude is my reply,» Clark mouths against Tim's cheek. The statement is more texture, tongue and lips, than sound. Tim is unsure of his translation, still working it out, when Clark adds, «Please, speak again. More.»
Tim shakes, gasps, as his mind goes blank. For a long, terrifying moment, words and inflections vanish before the bright, fierce *hope* on Clark's face. He struggles to make the appropriate sounds. «There is nothing more to discourse on. I am trusting in your...friendship.»
Did he say «friendship»? Companion, friend, war-comrade, and non-marital lover are all derived from the same root: The welcomed-other.
«Lover, lover,» Clark echoes into Tim's mouth. His hands are moving over Tim's sides, down his back, pulling him closer, into his lap.
He said «lover». No, that's. That's *wrong*. Factually correct, but --. Wrong.
Tim opens his mouth to explain. To *correct* -- accuracy above all things -- but no sound comes out beyond a sharp *heave*. Clark shields Tim's head with his arm and they're in the air, far from Amsterdam, wet wind streaking past.
Tim keeps his eyes closed when Clark touches down. They're somewhere warm, the air still and soft against his chapped skin.
«Recline,» Clark tells him and Tim's being pulled down to his knees, then eased back, Clark's hands moving over him, stripping and rubbing.
«I, please--» The *I* used by minors and slave-women, in appeal, to beseech. Imploring. Tim shakes his head and hears the soft murmur of grass against his ear. He needs the *I* of private friendship and finds it, somewhere in his throat. «That is, I--»
Clark places his hands on Tim's knees, pushing them up until his feet are flat on the ground, toes digging into the grass. He's silent as he palms Tim's ass, tongues him open, buries his face there. Beyond the faint, moist sounds, all Tim can hear is his own breath, sharp and fast, as Clark scrolls out incomprehensible odes in a lost script across the taut *heating* skin.
Accuracy, indeed. Tim's fingers move in Clark's hair, dig in and tangle, as his hips rise and fall, as he finds that space beyond language.
*
"It blew up," Kon shouts and throws the grammar against the wall. "Who's ever going to need to talk in a language whose planet *blew up*?"
"You have a point." Tim gathers the pages and sets them aside. "Maybe this was a bad idea."
"You *think*?" Kon kicks the pile, then drops down on one knee, punching Tim's arm. "C'mon. Let's go do -- *anything*."
"Right behind you."
*
Clark's fingers are a kind of magic. Tim rejects fantasy in favor of possibility and lets himself expect -- more.
*More*, cock and --. He needs, wants, more. All. Even Kryptonese is gendered, masculine-feminine-neuter, but it also includes the inanimate, the ungendered, the overgendered, the group. The pair.
Tim already has a partner. Now he wants -- *this*.
«Please, my friend --» Tim reaches blindly, grazing Clark's shoulder. His skin is *too* tight, wrenched around bone, so overheated that his eyes blur and his mouth clacks dryly, uselessly. «Do it. Do it *all*.»
Clark goes still. The imperative is clean, literal, unmistakable as a knife's blade. It is unencumbered by pronouns, unadorned with any elaboration.
Plain demand.
Tim holds his gaze steady, levelled on Clark's, as his toes dig into the soft folds of the cape. He cannot gentle the need, cannot ask or explain.
«Do it,» he says again. «Do. Fuck-screw-break me. Open.» Adjectives, shorn of their usual declension, torn from any noun, float free of context.
"Tim. Robin. I --" Clark's mouth works and for the first time, his English is -- *accented*. Halting and uncertain.
When Tim sits up, the angle of Clark's fingers inside him shifts. Goes deeper, somehow *wider*. His mouth, already open, *hangs* nearly unhinged and he fights for air.
("In any situation, however apparently dire, you *will* find the necessary resources. You may not recognize them as such at first, but they do exist. You must find them": Thus Batman's training, imprinted deeper than memory, than *marrow*, returns to Tim's mind.)
«I cannot ask anything of you.» Breathless, Tim touches Clark's cheek.
Between them, Clark's cock stands out, engorged, dark.
Blue sky behind Clark, storm-clouds and wildfires in his eyes, tar-dark need between his legs.
Tim feels it all, *confronts* it with all he has -- he, a fragile, barely-competent human -- with himself, his sight, his mouth.
These are his resources, broken down to a child's palette: red cape, blue sky, black need.
«Ask me,» Clark says finally. Tim does not recognize the pronoun, but he locates the verb as the tense of entreaty. A request, beseeching and hardly daring to hope. «I may -- that is, I want to --»
«Want,» Tim echoes.
The word, as he speaks, is both thing, noun, and action, verb. If he adds the companionable prefix, the pronoun of friendship and, yes, *lovers*, the word becomes --.
A reciprocity, an acting thing, a reified action. Neither noun nor verb but *both* of them, and the simplicity, the *foreignness*, makes his mind reel. No language on Earth -- none that *he* knows -- can make that happen.
Perhaps Basque, or Maori.
Tim presses his knees into the soft earth, spreading his legs as widely as they'll go ("my flexibility? of course"), and bears down on Clark's fingers. He repeats the word, newly made, and watches its effect on Clark.
On *Superman*.
Superman's mouth is a red slit, nearly obscene. Or, that is, it *would* be obscene, if he were not -- himself. Superman, Kal.
«Want.»
If he wasn't Superman, this would all be obscene. But he *is* and *here* and Tim licks the curve of his cheek. Superman listens with his entire body, Tim's pulse surrounding him, *crushing* him, urging him deeper.
«(Us-lover-we)-Want. You.» Superman's eyes shine red as the cape, as his mouth, when Tim uses Rao's You.
Superman inhales. Hears and *jerks*, live-wire fast, pumping come out over Tim's stomach and chest.
His chin. Come hot as a grease-fire and Tim moans.
At that, Superman's eyes widen, the storms to fire to *gales*, and his voice is high. "I can't," he says in broken English, "Not --. Not yet."
"Soon?" Tim asks.
Superman's nodding as his fingers push deeper into Tim, thrusting, and his mouth lowers, and --.
It's enough of a promise.
*
Tim appears to be...dating Superman. Sadly, regrettably, that's the very best term for what's going on.
*Dating*. Is not something that should be a possibility, not in this part of Tim's life.
But there is no better word for seeing someone twice, three times, a week, eating together (even if those meals are in far-flung locations, Dubai and Sydney and Amsterdam), having sex. Making --. No.
"There are rules. An *understanding*, you see," Clark says earnestly. "With Lois. With my wife. And --"
Something jagged rakes down Tim's throat. "I see."
If he wants to --. If Clark is to --. If Clark is to fuck him, then.
Lois gets to meet him first.
"Saturday," Tim says when Clark asks when would be good for him. "No. Thursday."
"It's a date," Clark says and --.
It's a date.
*
He modifies Gary Glanz's outfit, tones down the obnoxious grunge-boy edge with fabric softener and fewer piercings. A Flash t-shirt rather than the House of Pain. Clark hugs him when Tim steps off the train, hugs him long and hard, tells him he looks wonderful.
"And what am I supposed to call you?" Tim asks in the elevator. He can't be Gary. He has to be Tim, but he'll be -- another. Timofey Sirin, an owl rather than a duck, Russian immigrant living in Gotham.
"Clark," Clark replies. "It's easier, I wouldn't want --"
"I won't flub my lines."
"No." Clark squeezes his shoulder and kisses his forehead as the door dings and opens. "Of course not."
*
Lois Lane is every bit as terrifying as Tim has steeled himself for. But the terror comes not in her sarcasm, not in the sardonic cast to her face -- he has lived with, worked with, *Bruce*, after all. The terrible unease comes instead from her...*grace*. Her own sense of ease, here in her home, feeding her husband's *boyfriend* eggplant cutlet and tossed greens.
"May I?" Tim reaches for the bottle of Chianti when Lois pours herself another glass. Clark smiles at him over his own glass of apple juice.
Lois replaces the bottle on the sideboard and grins at him. "Nice try, kid."
"Hm."
She stabs him lightly with her butter knife. "Hm, what?"
"Interesting, that's all." Tim withdraws his hand and tilts his head. "I'm old enough to sleep with, but not to drink?"
Lois takes a long, thirsty swallow of her wine. "Pretty much."
Tim should have asked how often they've done this. In the name of preparing, of adequate provisions, he should know how regular an occurrence this -- this *family dinner*, followed by sex -- happens.
He didn't want to know. His failure of nerve is unforgivable.
"Tim's quite the reader," Clark tells Lois, so she questions him about what he's read. Needles him for liking science fiction, blows off his attempts to mention literary fiction -- "*Franzen*? Please, pull the other. Pretentious weasel" -- and gives him a list of American history texts to consult before he can argue about the Civil War with her.
Clark smiles. Clark *keeps* smiling.
When they retire to the living room, when the lights dim and Clark's head bends toward Lois's, when they kiss and Tim waits on the sofa, his terror lessens. There's no good reason *why* that should be, but --. He watches them embrace, watches Lois wriggle her leg between Clark's, and he drinks in the *ease*, the familiarity, they share. The obvious pleasure they take in touching, teasing, *being* with each other.
Watching, observing, has always been a --. Not a refuge so much as a natural state.
Lois withdraws to change. Clark joins Tim on the couch. His skin smells like Chanel Number Five, his mouth is slightly swollen, his hands as warm as ever, and he *pulls* at Tim.
"Thank you," he is saying, into Tim's mouth, against his chest, as he makes short work of Tim's pants, his briefs, as he sucks his way down Tim's shoulder. "Thank you. Oh --"
Tim straddles one of Clark's thighs, falling into the rhythm without letting himself think about it, twining his arms around Clark's neck and pushing back onto his blunt, *hot* thumb.
Everything is moving very fast. Not fast enough.
"Couldn't wait, huh, Kent?" Lois, across the room, and Tim doesn't turn; instead, he watches Clark *see* his wife, watches another, wider smile curve over his face. "Overeager bastard."
"Oh," Clark says and shivers. To Tim, he whispers, "You'll like this."
"Yes," Lois says, and she's right behind them now, two fingers on Tim's shoulders, nails digging in. "You're from Gotham. I think you'll appreciate --"
Not the Bat, Tim thinks, please not --. He turns slowly. Then quickly, Clark's hands on his waist, turning him all the way around, to face --. To look down, to take in --.
Nightwing.
"It's one of Clark's favorites," she adds and the mask is a replica, but the costume. The costume is authentic, stretched over her small, high breasts, exactly right and wrong simultaneously. Tim shudders, twists, his eyes trying to close, but Clark squeezes him, slides him lower in his lap.
Chuckles in Tim's ear as he penetrates him again. Index finger this time, thrusting heat up Tim's body, out his mouth, and Lois sinks to her knees, sardonic smile thinning to a smirk, then widening. Into an *O*, as she leans forward, hands on Tim's knees, and --.
Her mouth is much smaller than Clark's. Of course. And not nearly as *warm*, but Tim's body responds all the same. A groan he loathes escapes his mouth, and Clark is sucking on his ear, telling him how *wonderful* it-he-she looks, *they* look, and all the while, his finger pushes deeper, faster.
Clark matches the rhythm of Lois's mouth. They've practiced. This is familiar.
And Tim twists and pushes and falls *between* them, shuddering and sweating, urged on. Encouraged, devoured.
English is all too adequate. Clark and Lois are a *we*, a *they*, and Tim is --. Discrete, temporary.
Having licked Tim clean, licked Tim from Lois's mouth, Clark carries him to the bedroom.
Tim's not sure what happens now, except that there is -- mutuality? Some kind of reciprocation needs to be made. He reaches for Lois, touching her left breast, molding his palm to it, and does not think of Stephanie. Ariana. Anyone.
Clark slides down Lois's body and Lois clutches at Tim's hand, holds it in place. "Harder --"
He pinches her nipple through the Nightwing fabric, then harder again, as she writhes and clamps her legs around Clark's head. When she comes, she pushes Tim away. It could be an unconscious muscle seizure.
"Fuck me, Kent." Her voice is strained, *ragged*, and she turns to look at Tim briefly as Clark rises and settles over her.
Her eyes are unreadable. Intent, *dark*, and Tim returns the look. Until Clark pets his hip, beaming, then leans down to kiss her.
There is, Tim finds, a kind of magnificence in this primal scene: he bent over her, their faces drawn tight, an identical rictus of pleasure that belongs to them alone. Her hands on his shoulders, her hips rolling to meet his thrusts, and his lips on her throat, whispering in the pauses between her cries.
He enters her and she pushes him. There are vague notions, distant and inconsequential as gnats, at the back of Tim's head -- the mission, loyalty, duty, obligation.
This is just, simply and finally, Love. He and she, a matched pair. It's brighter than anything.
They're showing it to him.
He turns his head and he looks right at *Tim* and he's saying Tim's name as he fucks his wife, and Lois's hand drops, reaches out to graze Tim's knee, and --. It's too much, rolling over to meet them, getting drawn into the heat rising off them. He's sweating and trembling and she's kissing him while he touches him, the bed rocking against the wall, crushing them together.
And pronouns are ridiculous, inappropriate, *measly* things.
Or, perhaps, pronouns are fine, and it's *Tim* who fails to understand.
*
Lois leaves in the night for Blessed, Idaho, where a militia is massing.
Tim goes back to sleep, waking again when the curtains open and Superman is there, stripping off his costume, kissing him.
"Morning," Tim mumbles. There is a shower, a change into a spare pair of Lois's jeans and a Daily Planet softball team jersey, before he joins Su--*Clark* in the kitchen.
"Lois said to say goodbye," Clark says. "We weren't sure if you --."
Tim pours himself the last of the coffee. "She didn't...like me."
"No, no. Of course she did --" Clark gnaws at his lip. "She found you *very* attractive."
"So I gathered." He has four bitemarks on his thighs and chest, too small to be Clark's. They shone like coals under the shower's water. Tim shifts his weight and uncrosses his arms. He shivers, once, as Clark runs his hands down Tim's hips. Cups the hollows at the sides of his buttocks. "That, however, has nothing to do --"
Tim stops. Is stopped, by the look on Clark's face, his narrowed eyes, the entire *tilt* of his body imploring and beseeching.
«I am at a loss,» Clark says.
«As am I,» Tim replies.
"You've been using an...archaic dialect," Clark says. "Kryptonese rather than..."
"Not Kryptonian. Yes." Tim opens and closes his hands. "The Eradicator --"
"Is something of a fascist." Clark's lack of smile is entirely rueful.
"Indeed. But his -- its files. Are quite complete."
Clark rubs his hands over his face. "When I first learned the language, it was --"
"Kitchen Kryptonian," Tim suggests and Clark nods. "Appropriate for a child."
Clark nods again and shrugs. "Exactly."
"You're not --" Tim smiles, feeling his face tighten. "Well. You know."
Hand on Tim's shoulder, then his neck, warm open palm, Clark says, "Tell me. I like --"
"To hear me think, yes." Tim tilts his head into Clark's hand and lets his eyes close briefly. "You're not a child."
"And you never got to be." Clark's fingers tighten in Tim's hair. He might well be telling the truth.
"So," Tim says and steps away. "Did I get the all-clear?"
Clark frowns at that, mouth falling, eyes drooping. "Yes. But, Tim, I --"
Tim finishes his coffee. "Mission accomplished, then."
*
He'd expected annihilation. He did not *wish* for it, nor, really, seek it out, but getting --. Getting fucked by Superman: Surely, that would *result* in annihilation.
Tim stirs from sleep. It's the next day, the Titans will be wondering where he is, and --.
Frankly, he'd like to know that, too. He is outside, at the entrance to a jungle. This is not Belize.
This might not be Earth. The grass is a shade of green he's seen only on jewels, clutched by Catwoman, and the sky is at once too far away and too *heavy* to be real. The clouds are lavender, but the sun is high, red, in the sky.
When he rolls over, his hand hits a wall. An invisible one...? He crouches next to it and discerns the faint outlines of his own face.
A glass wall.
«Here,» Clark says behind him and hands Tim a swollen, yellow fruit he's never seen before. «As close to home as we get.»
The domestic *we*, found in late Kryptonian, noted first in Brainiac's files about --.
"Kandor," Tim says. And Clark beams.
[end]
Title from Paul Celan:
THE ETERNITIES struck
at his face and
past it,
slowly a conflagration extinguished
all candled things,
a green, not of this place,
with down covered the chin
of the rock which the orphans
buried and
buried again. (1970)