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“Is that another can?”
Tim freezes, can poised against his lips. “Um… no.”
Bart takes the can out of his hand and sets it down on the desk. “Dude.”
Tim should have known. He should have fucking known. Bart was getting as bad as Kon these days, always yammering about how he needed to cut down on the caffeine and how the sugar in soda was what was going to kill him if it wasn’t the caffeine stopping his heart first. How he was the only non-meta on their team right now and he needed to take care of himself, their dear precious leader. And he should have known not to pop open a new one with Bart in the vicinity. Stupid, he chides himself.
“It’s been three hours since the last one,” he hears himself say instead. Lame excuse, but whatever. Normal people drink coffee at this rate at their lame office jobs and no one bats an eye. Ha, Tim thinks. Bats.
“Sure, and it’s almost one in the morning,” Bart says, tilting his head a little. “You’ve been up for 3 days.”
“I’ve slept,” Tim argues.
“Yeah, like six hours total.” Bart holds the can away from him. “What is so important that you need to work on like this? We haven’t had a mission in like a week.”
Tim shrugs. “Stuff for Batman, I don’t know.”
Bart rolls his eyes. “Oh, so he can make you do stuff but not give us stuff to do.” Another point of contention that Tim doesn’t feel like arguing about.
“Give me the can, Bart,” Tim says through gritted teeth. “You’re not my mother.”
Bart tuts. “Go to your room, young lady!” He backtracks a couple steps away from Tim, until he's all the way across the room. “And I took the rest out of the fridge and hid them in a secret location that you’ll never find so don’t even try.”
“The vent behind your bed,” Tim says tonelessly.
Bart wilts a little. “How do you even know about that, man?”
“Dick found your weed there last year,” Tim replies, shutting his laptop. “Whatever. I’m going to my room.”
Bart grins and pumps his fist. “And I better not see you on that laptop in there.”
“Sure,” Tim says easily. He can work from his phone at least until tomorrow morning. It’ll trick Bart into thinking he’s getting his eight hours and give him his Zesti back so he can do some actual work.
He does end up taking a break, working his way through stretches and showering in scalding water until the bathroom is so muggy he feels like he could pass out. The base is cold this time of year– even the centralized heating unit can’t take away the chill of being tucked into a mountain range.
When he climbs into bed he clicks on his heating blanket and settles in, opening the spreadsheet app on his phone. If he can’t go over classified case files, he can at least work on budgeting.
He works for over an hour, plugging in numbers and formulas until his eyes are blurring, when he hears a knock at the door. “Hello?” he asks. “Bart?”
“Rob?” says the voice.
“Kon?” Tim glances at the time on his phone. 2:45. When the hell did Kon get here?
The door opens and Kon peeks his head into the room.
Tim sits up. “What are you doing here?”
“Had a nightmare,” Kon steps into the room and closes the door.
In the dim light of the lamp Tim can see that he’s dressed for bed, in white sweatpants that are stamped with a Smallville High School logo on the side and an old Wonder Woman t-shirt that’s a size too big.
“In Kansas?” Tim asks, softening a little after the initial shock of seeing him. They’d had a hard mission last week, with Kryptonite involved; Superman and Batman had benched Kon about two minutes into the fight and he had flown to Kansas and hadn’t come back. Tim had texted him as soon as he could and only received a bare minimum ‘I’m just cooling off be back later’ text that hadn’t gone anywhere.
“Yeah,” Kon says, rubbing his eyes. “Can I…”
“Huh?” Tim tracks Kon’s line of sight back to his own bed. “Oh, yeah, yeah. Of course.”
Permission granted, Kon meanders on over to the bed and dives right in.
Kon is a cuddler. Tim had known this even before they started… whatever it is that they’re doing. Are they dating? It’s kind of hard to date as an active vigilante when you don’t ever have free time or know what your schedule’s going to be or know if you or your partner are going to be alive tomorrow. Tim supposes they’re doing the closest thing they can to dating; they hang out and do things together outside of the team and kiss on the rooftops in Gotham when Bruce is out of town and sleep in the same bed and behave because Bart and Cassie might not have as good of superhuman senses as Kon but they can definitely hear through the walls.
Kon throws his arm over Tim’s torso and shoves his face into Tim’s side, sighing contently when Tim slides his arm around his back.
“Better?” Tim says, running a hand through Kon’s hair.
Tim never said he wasn’t a cuddler either.
Kon nods as best he can. “Mmph.”
“You flew here all the way from Kansas?” Tim asks, frowning a little. He knows Kon can handle himself just fine, but still; it’s a long way to go in the dark after just waking up.
“Left a note on the table for Ma,” Kon says, not opening his eyes. “All good.”
Tim squirms down until he’s not sitting up anymore. “If you can plug my phone in and turn off the lamp we can just go to bed.” Looks like Bart wins, that evil little imp.
The lamp clicks off and Tim’s charging cord floats up and plugs itself into Tim’s phone, then floats the phone over to the dresser.
“Your heart is racing,” Kon murmurs, shifting his head a little to rub it against Tim’s chest.
“I’ve got a pretty boy in my bed,” Tim says, scratching at the back of Kon’s hairline.
Kon snorts. “Liar,” he says, no fight in his voice. “I can smell the Zesti on your breath. Lemon-lime flavor.”
“First of all, two things can be true at once,” Tim argues. “My heart can be racing because I had a lot of caffeine and because I’m talking to a pretty boy. Second, smelling my breath is really gay.”
Kon laughs, his voice syrupy and tired. “Tim, you're gay.”
Tim grins. “Wrong again. I’m bisexual.”
Kon tugs on his shirt. “If you keep arguing with me I’m going to think you hate me.”
Tim presses a kiss to his head. “Wrong three times in a row. You’re on a hot streak.”
Kon giggles, his laughs muffled against Tim’s shoulder.
When he quiets, Tim can hear his low purr. He presses his free hand against Kon’s side and feels the slight vibrations beneath his shirt, emanating from beneath his rib cage. Tim had never asked how he purrs– he already knows the basic science behind cats purring– but Kon had shyly confessed that he hadn’t even known he could purr for the longest time, until the team had actually become a team and began spending more time together.
“You know, studies show that cats purring can lower humans’ heart rates and blood pressure by triggering the release of oxytocin,” Tim murmurs.
Kon snorts sleepily. “What, so am I like your emotional support animal?”
“Something like that,” Tim says, pressing his lips against the crown of Kon’s head. His curls are so soft against Tim’s cheeks that they tickle. “My emotional support Kryptonian.”
Kon hums, his eyes closed. “Every bat’s gotta have one.”
Tim nods. He vaguely recalls the sound of Jon purring, curled up in his sleeping bag next to Damian in the screening room at Wayne Manor as they watched Free Willy together. “Sure,” he says. “We’re the best matched, of course.”
“Obviously,” Kon says, but his voice is fading.
He always looks a little funny when he’s exhausted, Tim thinks, with no sunglasses or exaggerated smirk on his face. He likes this quieter, more honest version of Kon. “Go to sleep,” Tim says. “I’ll make you pancakes in the morning.”
Kon’s face twitches into a frown. “No, you won’t. I’ll make them, and you can sit there and look pretty and drink the decaf coffee I make you.”
“If you really thought I was pretty you’d let me have it caffeinated,” Tim says.
Kon sniffs. “You don’t even like coffee. Decaf tea for you.”
Tim groans, closing his eyes. He supposes he can live with decaf for just one day.