(Untitled)

[not_the_s]

The couch, a handful of pills, and a glass of juice. Kon threw back the pills and took a large swallow of juice, thankful that he'd finally found a way to the Compound after his 'shortcut'. He closed his eyes and slumped against the couch, his mind going back to conversations he'd had the last few weeks. One in particular stood out. Dairine and

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[goldeneyedflash]

Bart actually wasn't that hard to find, being only a few doors down in the lab. He'd been spending most of his time that he wasn't training with Robin or Nightwing there trying to help keep the not so recent rash of technically inclined people vanishing from affecting the island's pipeline for drug production.

Currently, he was taking down the latest readings on a batch of bacterial cultures and worrying about what they were going to use for substrate if the population kept growing and the lab supplies kept shrinking. He barely looked up when Kon entered, then started, looking again at his friend.

"Are you okay?"

[not_the_s]

Kon snorted. "I'm fine, Bart. My head feels like it's smacked against the rock again, but I think I'm getting used to that." Or else the drugs were kicking in and the headache was going away. He really, really hoped it was the second one. "And apparently it's supposed to go away after a little while."

[goldeneyedflash]

"You'd have to ask Tim or Dick. Getting tied up and beat about the head and neck is apparently part of the Robin gig," he said, trying for a joke as he wrote down a few more numbers on the chart. "My only experience is that the bad guys turned themselves in after Impulse yakked on them at a bank robbery."

It had been a long time ago, or so it seemed. Another life. Impulse retired after he'd been shot. Kid Flash vanished into the Speed Force and never returned. And the Flash was dead and buried. "You wanted something?"

[not_the_s]

"Tim was the one I went to when I first saw...when this first happened. Who else do you think I'd go to?" Kon didn't know anyone else in the lab. He cocked his head when Bart mentioned 'Impulse'. "When you did, you mean. You might be a genius or something, but deep down somewhere, there's still the kid who broke the Batmobile."

Such a shame that he'd missed it.

[goldeneyedflash]

"And the Batplane," Bart had to point out, unable to stop the grin from forming. "Though that was after when you're from. Didn't ever find out why you'd skipped that weekend. Was too busy getting chewed out over the Welcome to Smallville sign.

"And I'm no genius, I just read too much."

[not_the_s]

"You read too much and remember what you read. If that doesn't make you smart, I don't know what does." It cheered Kon a little to see Bart smiling again. He didn't smile often enough around here in Kon's opinion and that only reminded Kon of what he meant to talk to Bart about.

"I was wondering if you could show me the hot springs. I heard something about them, I think? I just don't know where they are." He grinned. "Show and join if you think you can deal with the water."

[goldeneyedflash]

"It isn't the water, it's the stuff in the water!" Bart protested automatically, even as he started to tidy up the bench he'd been working at. "You would have found them that first day if you'd gone much farther. They're in the caves, not too far from the laundry room."

The suggestion was a good one, he thought as he stretched and heard his back make a crackling sound. "I guess the mold can wait."

[not_the_s]

Kon snorted. "Yes, the mold can wait. Go find me a suit and I'll meet you at the door." Oh, yes. He remembered where that door was. That day was pretty much burned into his memory. The entire, what, 36 hour day? Not a moment had been anything but memorable.

"I'll see you down there." He went ahead of Bart to pick up a suit of his own. It wasn't like he'd exactly planned on taking Bart to the hot springs, but it seemed like a good enough place to talk.

[goldeneyedflash]

Bart frowned slightly at that, and finished putting the stuff away before following. There was an order to the lab, not quite the pristine neatness of Tim's work-spaces, but it stayed a certain way, and he respected that.

Stopping at the box, he grabbed pretty much the first pair of swim shorts he saw, not caring about the day-glo palm trees or anything else. "I don't come down here often enough. For a soak, I mean."

[not_the_s]

"See?" Kon called, already dressed in trunks that were a little shorter than the board shorts he normally wore. He was standing over by the door waiting for Bart. "You need to get out more. You're becoming as insular as Tim and I didn't even think it was possible."

He waited for the inevitable response he expected: a comment about his vocabulary.

[goldeneyedflash]

"My idea of human interaction doesn't involve a telephoto lens," Bart said, dryly, not making a point on the word choice. It was true. "I just don't make friends all that easily anymore. Probably having to pretend to be grown up. I've given up on figuring out the math on how old I really am. Too many questions on what counts and what doesn't."

[not_the_s]

Idiot. Kon punched his arm. "You act more like the adult you think you should be when you don't try, you know. Like when I knew you back when. When you weren't trying, you just were." Was this why Bart was acting weird or was it something more than that? "Come on. Am I technically two? Two and a half? Sixteen? What?"

[goldeneyedflash]

"Hey!" Bart said, rubbing the spot. "I think we better go with sixteen. Any younger and we'd both need guardians."

[not_the_s]

Kon smirked and hung back a little to let Bart take the lead. "Please. If I had a guardian until I actually turned sixteen people would think I was..." He did the quick mental math. "Thirty."

[goldeneyedflash]

"Exactly," Bart said, not slowing all that much as he led them to the hot springs and carefully slid into the water with a soft sigh. "So, SB, why did you hunt me down instead of a flock of girls in bikinis?"

[not_the_s]

Kon groaned a little and closed his eyes when he got in the water. That was just the thing he'd needed and he congratulated himself on a great spur-of-the-moment decision. "Hmm? Oh, right. What's wrong?"