(Untitled)

[not_the_s]

Kon had definitely had some epic fails in his life. There had been the thing with Knockout, obviously, and then the thing with Tana and that had worked out just wonderfully...sarcasm heavily meant. There were some island fails, too. Mostly it was the fail that had happened when the island had messed with him and then his reaction to that. Some

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[liestobatman]

He smells the fire before he's close enough to see it through the trees, heading out to the beach rather than inland, tonight. The morning naps had caught up with him today, knocked him out for twelve hours and he's just coming out of the cloudy, cramped feeling that comes with oversleeping. He'd stretched, gotten something to eat, and spent the lighter part of the evening idling over plans for the race course

[not_the_s]

Kon really shouldn't have jumped. That's what Tim did. He snuck up on you when you least expected it and once...no. No, not once he'd been able to expect it. He'd always jumped. He glared up at Tim, but there was the slightest hint of a twitching around his lips. "I think you do that on purpose," he accused. "Actually, I know you do that on purpose."

He sucked in a breath and gestured at a spot by the fire. "Pull up some sand." He'd tossed the game already, but he still had the box and he offered it to Tim. "Want the honors?"

[liestobatman]

"Habit," he says, mouth twitching in turn. It's an accusation he's used to, stopped apologizing for ages ago. He sneaks up on people, they don't like it, and he can't pretend he's going to stop any time soon.

You can't exactly toss years of training into a fire and call it done. Taking the box from Kon and examining it, he understands the burning plastic. "If this box could honor anything, I'd give it to Jason," he answers, flicking it into the flames, paper going first and curling from the plastic, yellow licked away by orange. "What is this supposed to accomplish?"

[not_the_s]

"An apology," Kon answered. He stared at the flames and shook his head. That wasn't right. He hadn't known that Tim would show up. Maybe he could have hoped, but he hadn't given Tim any reason to guess that he'd be here. "Maybe it's more realizing that I don't even know why you're upset. Not dismissing that you are," he said quickly. "Honestly not knowing the reason. I've missed so much with you. With Bart. Cissie and Cassie are the only two who haven't lived years beyond me."

Maybe it wasn't years, but in their world, months seemed like years sometimes.

"And maybe I haven't wanted to know. I want to pretend that everything's the same. But as recent events have proven, I can't. So I think I should hear if you want to tell. I don't want to feel like there's something between us. Namely everything I lived through and everything you lived through that neither of us know about."

[liestobatman]

Tim has to put a hand over his face, finger digging hard into the crease between his brows and palm covering his frown. There's no such thing as a subtle expression in this kind of lighting, shadows digging in and exaggerating every flicker of emotion. "So I should explain it again, now that you're not going to pretend not to know?"

He drags the hand away, looks at Kon through his overgrown bangs. "This thing between us isn't going to go away, Kon. It's not just things that happened when one of us wasn't there." Plenty has happened here, things that don't burn away. "I'm the freaky Bat-Person, I get it, but I have feelings that don't just disappear if I explain them. And yours won't either, so I'm not going to tell you anything when you're putting your fuck-ups in a bonfire."

[not_the_s]

"You're my freaky Bat-Person," Kon said quietly, "and I'm not trying to make the things disappear. I know that I can't just ask to start over. That's not what this is about. I..." He sucked in a breath and let it out in a long sigh. "I feel like I've been left out and it's not your fault. It's not Bart's fault. It just is. Maybe it's the island's fault. I know that I die and I know that Bart dies. I don't know what else happens. I've purposefully avoided finding out. Hell, I was almost yelling at Bart when I saw him reading comics

[liestobatman]

No, Tim thinks: he's seen Kon try. He's seen Kon tackle problems no one else could, take on tasks no one should shoulder, make sacrifices and get the job done no matter the cost. If this is what it looks like now, then--he doesn't even know. Is this Kon without his powers, is this Kon when he's been on a tropical island watching people get engaged and disappear?

He doesn't know, he just knows it's not good enough tonight. "Try harder," he says, unable to return the sentiment right now. It feels like it's just something to say, a bandage or a guilt trip or both. "You still think I care about that game, or that we're best friends because it's a thing you can say? I tell you things and you don't listen to me. I try to talk to you and you throw something I didn't know, something I would never want to know in my face.

"Then when I find out why you did that, you tell me I don't care and leave before I can even say anything, like. Like it's something you can't talk to me about at all, so what kind of friend am I really?" He

[not_the_s]

"Then you don't want to know about me! Do you care about what happened to me while you weren't here? While there was another you on the island? Another Bart? I could tell you about how Cassie and I dated. And that's not some thing that other Tim did or didn't do to me. You claim that I wasn't listening to you. Well, you weren't listening to me either. You didn't bother to ask about any of it. I want to try to get to know the Tim Drake you've been since the last time I saw you. Properly and not here. Do you want to know the Kon-El who's been on the island for the last few years

[liestobatman]

"I DON'T WANT TO KNOW I WAS SCREWING MY ADOPTIVE BROTHER," he yells, torn between getting it through to Kon and just walking away. "I tried to tell you something, I tried to talk to you about something I never talk about, and before I even figure out how, we're talking about you and that. That's not something that happened to you Kon, it happened to me, and it's not something you tell me about without some fucking sensitivity."

Does he want to know this person? Does he want to fix something this broken, when Kon still won't listen? How is telling him what happened before supposed to change anything? Tim doesn't think listening to Kon will ever let it stop being about Kon, and he's.

He's let so much of the last year be about Kon. "I don't know what I want. I don't know what I feel, or could feel, or--or of course I don't because you keep treating me like shit. You're treating me like shit right now, and you don't even get it. Out of all the things you said to me, saying you had feelings for me is the only one I'm even okay

[not_the_s]

"So, Conner Kent puts his foot in his mouth again." Kon buried his face in his hands. "And I'd say that I didn't mean it, but I totally did. When Cassie broke up with me, you were about the one thing worth hanging onto. And then you vanished and it hurt like hell and maybe that's not your fault, but I can't just turn my feelings off, damn it. I saw you and I saw those books and I flipped out a little. I didn't have the chance...no, I didn't have the guts to say it the first time and fine, maybe you didn't want to know about Dick, but he did, and by the time I might have said something, it was too late. I wasn't going to come between you and someone you cared about. God knows you deserve better than me

[liestobatman]

What he deserves is debatable, but at the very least, he deserves this, he thinks. Kon starting to get it, Kon wanting to fix it if they can. "I'm sorry that happened. If I could make it so that version of me never left, if I could make this less complicated, I would, I'm sorry things got left unsaid. And you can tell me about them if you need to, just give me some warning next time?"

He's not sure when he'd be in the mood to hear something like that, but it would have been easier with some buildup, maybe some privacy. Not that he's had the best track record of respecting it on his own end. "You're right about me avoiding it though, and I'm sorry for that too. I didn't want to know, but I do now, if it can help us figure this out." He sighs, looking past the fire at the tide, coming or going, reflecting the light at its edge. "I'm not going home any time soon, why don't we just sit down and talk?"

[not_the_s]

Kon's stomach felt like it was on some kind of roller coaster. Up and down and up and down again. Currently he was on the upswing and feeling something perilously close to hope. Tim hadn't walked away. It didn't sound like he was going to walk away. That was about as much hope as he was going to allow himself for the moment.

"There's a spot here," he suggested, nodding at a spot to the fire near him. It wasn't close enough that Tim would be creeped out, but it would be close enough to talk.

[liestobatman]

He takes it, tucking himself in with his arms around his knees. He's not going to run away this time "Alright, for right now, you can tell me anything you think I need to know. Even if it's about Dick, just...only what I need to know about that." For any other subject, he'd want the details, but not this.

[not_the_s]

"I, uh, don't know the details of that. You...he...there was Tim and Bart before that. Before I got on the island. It was kind of like the world had spun on its head when I showed up. We were in comics, that was the first thing y-he told me. And then all kinds of other stuff I didn't want to know. There was a statue by the treehouse that declared me dead. I hated that part. Then there was Cassie. She was the only sane one of the bunch." Kon ran a hand through his hair. "But soon enough, the island had its fun and it made me act like Luthor. Not the Lex here who is only sort of questionable, but the Lex Luthor from home."

He felt sick just remembering what he'd done. "I...tried to seduce Bart. And a friend of y-uhh, Tim. And did a hell of a lot more. When I...when I was myself again, Cassie broke up with me. I always thought we were this perfect couple, you know? She's forgiven me for so much."