Chapter Text
Tim checked his phone, frowning. He’d been planning on looking into some weird activity down in the Bowery, but it wasn’t like it was urgent urgent, he could easily look into it the next day. Plus he still felt sort of guilty for having to cancel on Bernard the week before due to a mission with the Titans that had taken a tad longer than expected.
God, he was lucky that Bernard was a patient guy.
So obviously, when Bernard had called him asking him if he was free, he’d said sure. Hence why he was sitting in Bernard’s favourite coffee shop, sipping a caramel latte and checking his phone every thirty seconds.
To be fair, he had chosen to arrive early. Partly to avoid being questioned about his date, partly because he knew Bernard would probably be there early too and Tim was nothing if not na overachiever.
He’d barely ever come to this café before he started dating Bernard – and god, it still felt so weird that he could say that. He was dating Bernard. Bernard was dating him. Regardless, he’d maybe come down to this café once or twice before, but it was apparently Bernard’s favourite café in the whole of Gotham, so it went without saying that it was now the place Tim spent the most time at outside of his own home.
He took another sip of his latte, looking around at the café. It was almost suspiciously nice, for a café in Gotham – in fact, the first time Tim had come in here with Bernard, the amount of plants in there had made him suspect that Poison Ivy was going to leap out from behind one of the Bonsai trees.
But nope, apparently the owners daughter was just going through some kind of plant phase or something, and he hadn’t – as of yet – ever been ambushed by some crazy supervillain whilst in there. Which was suspicious in it’s own right, given it was more than he could say for literally any other building in Gotham, but he wasn’t going to count his blessings.
He ignored the small, suspiciously Superboy-sounding voice in his head that pointed out he’d already investigated whether it had any criminal connections.
A bunch of pride flags were strung over the walls, which was probably one of the reasons Bernard liked it so much, now that he thought about it. Fairy lights were strung up all over the ceiling, and the sun shone through the window, lighting up the room with a brightness that was uncharacteristic of Gotham.
The music was pretty nice too – not that he’d ever admit he liked having Taylor Swift on in the background to anyone. God, Conner would laugh so hard at that. And don’t even get started on Jason.
Also, the coffee here was, like, really good. He’d sell his soul for a constant supply of coffee like this.
Actually, that might be something he could do. He’d fought some of the most ridiculous villains over the last couple of years, there had got to be one that, like, traded souls for wishes or something. It was way too cliché not to be taken already.
Huh. He should really look into that. It could be useful-
His phone pinged, dragging him rather rudely – albeit, probably for the best – out of his train of thought. He opened it almost instantly, eyebrows drawing together with concern, expecting something from Bernard.
They’d been dating for months, yet still Tim was waiting for the text telling him this was all some kind of joke. Not that he thought Bernard would ever do that, but still.
Instead, though, he found that Jason had sent him a pictyure. He snorted as he opened it up, knowing full well that Jason had been put in charge of looking after Damian and Jon for the day. Which, quite frankly, was not something Tim was going to even think about until either Jason called him asking him to find the kids he’d inevitably lost, or Dick called him to tell him they were in the hospital.
Thankfully, it appeared that all was going ok so far – Jason was grinning and throwing up a peace sign at the camera, what seemed to be Damian attempting to decapitate Jon in the background. The caption just read Babysitting, don’t blame me if anyone dies.
Sometimes Tim wished he had a normal family. Most brothers wouldn’t have meant that quite so literally.
just be glad the demon childs not trying to kill you atm, he sent back, along with a picture of the coffee shop he was sitting in. Jason had this weird thing about sending people images – Tim had almost never used social media for talking to people before Jason had decided he'd take a small break in trying to murder him and maybe even try being friendly once in a while, but apparently the only semi-reliable way to communicate with Jason was over snapchat, of all things.
Whatever. They all had their issue. Dick, for one, didn’t like coffee.
He laughed again as Jason sent a second picture, this time of Damian and Jon wrestling on the floor of the batcave. Ah, young love was the caption this time, which – yeah, Tim was still getting over the fact Damian even had a friend, he decidedly did not want to touch the possibility of the demon child having a crush with a ten foot pole.
Tim was smart. He could wrap his head around a lot of things. Damian Wayne having a crush was not one of them.
He was about to respond when something slammed onto the table in front of him. He looked up, instinctively reaching for a weapon, when he saw what – or rather, who – had slammed his hands onto the table.
Bernard grinned wildly down at him, his messy hair contrasting with his fairly smart pink t-shirt and jeans, bright green eyes wide open and cheeks slightly flushed, like he’d been running there. Which, actually, wasn’t entirely impossible.
Was it cheesy to think he looked beautiful like that?
Probably.
Whatever.
Tim opened his mouth to say something that he’s sure would have been completely witty and charming or whatever the hell boyfriends were supposed to be, maybe hi – “Tim, Tim, babe, Tim, you’re not going to fucking believe this.”
Ah. So it was a conspiracy theorist kind of day then. Excellent.
Honestly, Tim found Bernards theories hilarious. Not even in an ‘I know something you don’t and therefore I’m laughing at you’ kind of way – which, for the record he was much more used to feeling – more in a ‘if I didn’t know the truth then I might actually buy into this but I do know the truth so this is just a bit of a trip’ kind of way.
Maybe he should feel bad listening to his theories and not telling him that, hey, I know exactly what the truth is and also I’m a part of that truth.
And yeah, sometimes the fact that he was keeping half of his life – hell, more than half of his life, before Bernard got back in touch with him, Tim would have confidently said that Red Robin was virtually all of his life, at least all of it that he still gave two shits about – sometimes that kept him up at night, sometimes he wanted to tell Bernard so bad that it physically hurt.
But also, Tim knew how much Bernard loved making his absolutely ridiculous theories. Part of him was convinced that even if Bernard did fnid out about his secret life, he’d still make them up instead of asking him. Plus, they were the highlight of Tim’s week.
Seriously, what teenager wouldn’t want to hear about how their boyfriend thinks their dad is harbouring a secret orphanage full of ninja babies for the explicit purpose of ‘Robin production’? Or how their older brother is actually a disguised gorilla from an alternate universe?
(Seriously. This was the same guy that had managed to correctly work out out how many Robins there were and figured that the second Robin became Red Hood. The worst part is when he argued about the gorilla thing, it had made sense. Tim wished he’d recorded it, Dick would have found it hilarious.)
“Hey Bernard, nice seeing you again, how are you, I’ve missed you so much, you want to catch up on what we’ve missed over this past week?” Tim muttered pointedly, Bernard rolling his eyes as he swung himself into the seat opposite Tim, chucking his backpack onto the floor.
“Yeah yeah, love you too. So anyways, you gotta hear me out, cause like – no, don’t give me that look, I know what you’re gonna say, and you gotta hear me out, cause I know I’m onto something here, ok?”
I really hope not, Tim thought.
“Ok, ok, so – wait, is that caramel? Give me some.” Bernard grabbed Tim’s latte and drained what was left of it, licking his lips excitedly as he put it back down.
“Hey, I paid for that.”
“Yeah, well, you’re rich, you can cope. I’ll get you another one, stop pouting. Anyways, look-” He wrestled with the zip of his backpack for a minute before finally yanking it open, pulling out what looked like a wad of paper with a flourish “-at this!”
Tim waited, raising an eyebrow until Bernard pushed the pieces of paper towards him. They were – they were several newspaper cuttings paperclipped together, which – “Bernard, why the everloving hell are you using newspaper cuttings, it’s the 21st century.”
Bernard’s grin widened, rolling his eyes as he reached out to clutch Tim’s hand dramatically. “And that, my dear Timothy, is why I am and forever will be endlessly cooler than you. You have no sense of dramatics.”
Tim raised an eyebrow.
“Ok, you can be slightly dramatic. Just not for the aesthetic. Which is a shame, really. All that potential, literally being wasted on spilled coffee- hey!” he yelped, letting go of Tim’s hand to rub at his shin where Tim had just kicked him. Tim tried not to look too upset by that.
“Anyway, that’s not the point here. Look-” he pushed the article on the top of the pile towards Tim again, hair falling slightly towards his eyes as he did so.
Tim’s eyes reluctantly dragged away from Bernard and towards the picture. Actually – yeah, he recognised that article, Conner had been whining about getting wet in that fight for hours. The picture in the article had been taken just after he flew out of the sea, a small dog that had been caught in the crossfire tucked underneath one of his arms.
The dog hadn’t really been what Tim had been focusing on when he looked at the article, though – he was a little ashamed to admit that he had been ever so slightly distracted by the way Conners soaking hair fell into his face, how the water was dripping down his arms, how his muscles –
Yeah, ok, cutting off that line of thought. Not only was that his best friend, but Tim literally had a boyfriend. Whom he loved very much. Jesus.
Tim went to drink more of his coffee, only to remember that Bernard had finished it. Rude.
“So?” Bernard asked, an eyebrow raised expectantly.
“It’s, uh, Superboy?” Tim prompted, not sure whether this was going.
“Yeah, obviously, but like, look at him. Properly.”
“Bernard, I promise you I am looking at Superboy.”
Bernard squinted at him calculatingly. “And?”
“And he, uh, sure is super. And a boy. Definitely a super boy. Superboy. Yup, that’s him. Your point?”
“You don’t, you know, recognise him at all?”
Tim choked on air. “huh?”
Bernard narrowed his eyes, opening his mouth to say something, when – thank any god that wasn’t actively trying to destroy earth – the waitress came back over to their table, giving Tim a minute to recover.
She started to chat with Bernard – he had been coming here long enough that he was practically best friends with everyone in here – and Tim took a few deep breaths, forcing himself not to panic. It was fine, Bernard probably just thought Superboy looked similar to some celebrity.
The chances of him recognising Conner as Superboy – yeah, no, they’d never even met in person, there was no way. Tim was panicking for absolutely no reason. No way had Bernard actually figured it out. He just needed to calm down. Honestly, the idea was ridiculous.
“Yeah, one caramel latte and one cappuccino, thanks Kate!”
Bernard spun back around to Tim as Kate walked off with a brilliant gleam in his eyes. “Ok, so you know that friend of yours?”
Oh, fuck.
“You know, the one in all your pictures? With the weird sunglasses and dark hair and, like, with the muscles and everything?”
Tim’s rapidly incoming panic attack was halted for a second, so he could choke on some more air. Which, you know, wasn’t suspicious at all.
“I’m sorry, my friend with the – what?”
For the record, no, his voice did not crack. He was a big, grown up, seventeen year old. Whose boyfriend had just figured out that his best friend was Superboy which was really only one step away from figuring out that Tim was Red Robin. But, more importantly – with the muscles and everything?
“Oh come on, like you haven’t noticed, the man’s jacked. Which! Only proves my point!” Bernard declared, waving one of his arms around in the air.
“No, wait, back up from the Superboy thing for a minute. The main thing you notice about my friend is that he has muscles?”
“Hey, I mentioned his hair and his glasses too! Plus, I mean, I’ve only ever seen him in pictures, so like, yeah, duh.” Bernard paused, tilting his head to the side. “Well actually, he has an absolutely gorgeous jawline too, like, holy shit that facial structure is to die for, but I thought that would be a little weird to just spit out like that, you know?”
“And with the muscles and everything wasn’t?”
“Hush, not the point. Stop deflecting this conversation.”
Funnily enough, Tim wasn’t even deflecting the conversation on purpose. Sure, Conner had nice muscles, but – “Wait, what about his jawline.”
“Nevermind, babe, forget about the muscles. Look, he looks exactly like superboy! Like, facial structure and, yeah, muscles and everything.” With that, Bernard grabbed the stack of papers, wrestling his way through them until he reached whatever it was he was looking for, yanking it out and shoving it towards Tim.
Tim looked, and – yeah, Tim had to restrain himself from face planting against the table. On one side was a picture of superboy – with the leather jacket and sunglasses and everything – and on the other was a picture of Conner, very clearly half of a photo that Tim distinctly remembers having up in his bedroom (when did Bernard take that?) with what looked like cheap sunglasses drawn on in like, ms paint or something.
There was also a second one, except this time the picture of the sunglasses were taken off of Superboy and pasted over Conners face. Very badly. You couldn’t even see half of Conners face. Wow.
“Bernard, I love you, but who the hell taught you to photoshop.”
“That’s not the point, it’s a steep learning curve, go fuck yourself. Anyway, that’s not all, there’s also – dogs! You said he likes dogs, and look! Dog!”
“I hardly think he likes dogs is substantial evidence for – for –”
“Oh, come on. It totally makes sense! Besides, why else would he be so jacked!”
“He works on a farm, Bernard, it’s literally that simple.”
“Yeah, but that’s not even all of it. Come on, you’re always talking about him, you’ve got to see how much it makes sense.”
Tim held his hand up, still desperately trying to recover from the – from the muscles and jawline comments. “I’m sorry, you expect me to believe that Conner-“
“Huh, I always thought it was Corn.”
“Is a superhero?”
“Now I think about it, Corn would have been a ridiculous name. I kind just didn’t want to ask, you know?”
“Look, I’ve seen him fail to open a box of cereal.” Tim chose not to mention that when he said fail to open a box of cereal he meant he accidentally ripped the packet in half with his super strength and the cereal went absolutely everywhere. That probably really would not help convince Bernard against the superboy theory.
“You expect me to believe that the guy that got defeated by froot loops is superboy?” He continued, trying to sound disbelieving as possible instead of in shock. Or whatever it was he was still going through. Muscles and everything? Really?
“He can be a superhero and still an idiot, you know. And I mean that in the best way possible, before you get all defensive. Plus, it explains so much! Like, you know, how he’s super good at hearing-”
“He has awful hearing, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“-plus obviously it explains him having so many muscles, like, oh my god that is not normal-”
“You know, I’m starting to think I should be concerned over how interested my boyfriend is in another guy’s muscles.”
“-and those sunglasses, like, I have only ever seen two people wear those ridiculous gas station sunglasses, and that’s your friend and superboy-”
“Literally anyone could stop off at a gas station and buy cheap glasses, that proves literally nothing-“
“-and how he travels from one place to another so fast! It all adds up!”
Ok, so Tim might be a tiny bit in love with how smart his boyfriend was. To be fair, it’s not like Conner ever put any real effort into actually hiding his identity at any point (beyond those awful sunglasses, but he’d gone through a phase of wearing them as Superboy too, so Tim’s not so sure that that counts. He thinks Conner might actually just really like those sunglasses.)
Still though, it wasn’t a particularly good thing that he was figuring it out. If he got confirmation that Conner was Superboy, it wouldn’t be long until he figure out the identities of all the rest of his friends, or even Tim himself. Which, as awful as it was, Tim couldn’t allow to happen.
Not yet, at least.
Besides – “How do you know all that about him anyway?”
Bernard rolled his eyes. “Babe, you talk about him all the time. Honestly, I used to think he was your ex or something.”
Tim choked on air. Again. Honestly, the way this conversation was going, Bernard’s actual plan was to get him to choke to death. “He’s not my-”
“Yeah, I know that now, duh.”
Kate came back over with their drinks, giving Tim a precious few seconds to emotionally recover. Sure, he might talk about Conner more than his other friends, but that wasn’t a particularly solid reason for Bernard to assume they had dated. Especially given Bernard was literally the first guy he had dated.
Bernard pushed his latte towards him, and Tim downed half of it almost immediately. He barely even noticed the heat. This was probably salvageable, right? Sure, Bernard’s theory was slightly, uh, concerning, but it’s not like he ever properly proved any of his other theories were correct, right?
This would probably be forgotten by this time tomorrow. It was fine. Everything was fine.
“Anyways, you’re going to help me prove it.”
At least this time Tim actually choked on something, not just air. Although choking on a hot drink was arguably worse, given now he was in actual, like, burning pain, not just emotional pain. But whatever.
“I’m sorry, we’re going to what now?”
“Look, I have a plan, ok? All you gotta do is invite him over for a few nights, don’t even worry about it.”
Oh, he was very much worried about it.
“Bernard, no offense, but given you want me to invite my friend over to Gotham so that you can carry out some crazy science experiments on him, I am mildly worried.”
“Ok, that’s a bit of an overexaggerating-“
“I don’t have many friends, Bernard! I’d like to keep the few who actually like me around, if you don’t mind!” Tim’s voice was becoming worryingly high pitched, but you know what, he had bigger things to worry about.
“I mean, it would be less crazy evil scientist vibes and more whoops I’m incredibly clumsy can you believe I just dropped an industrial fridge off a building kind of vibes.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I mean if anything you should be more worried about me in this scenario.”
“You know you’re not helping your case, right? Like, if anything, you are actively dissuading me from agreeing to this.”
“What, are you trying to keep the fact he’s superboy away from me? Do you know something I don’t, Timothy?” Bernard winked. God, Tim had no idea what to do in this situation.
Did Bruce have a plan for this? There must be a file on what to do if your significant other realises your best friend is a vigilante and enlists your help in catching them out and if you don’t agree it’s gonna lowkey implicate that you’re trying to hide something, right?
Actually, probably not. Bruce didn’t really have enough friends to worry about that. Or at least, he didn’t like to acknowledge the fact that he might actually have made some emotional connections in his life. Which was arguably worse. But again, they all had their issues.
Apparently he had sat there in silence for too long, because Bernard huffed, pulling out another piece of paper. “Oh come on, I have a plan and everything. You can veto any ideas that you hate, so you don’t even have to worry!”
Tim frowned. This was such an incredibly bad idea. “What, you really think Conner could be Superboy?”
Wow, great going there, Tim. Now it sounds like you’re starting to buy his theory. Round of applause for you!
Bernard just shrugged, bouncing slightly as he apparently decided that statement meant a guaranteed victory. Which to be fair, was guaranteed from the start, because even if Tim wasn’t panicking too hard to think, he had no clue how to say no to literally anything Bernard said.
“I mean, I don’t really have any clue, I’ve never met the guy – or, like, any of your new friends, actually, but whatever – but even if I’m wrong, it’ll be fun, right? Plus, I do kinda think I’m right. Like, just a little.”
“You know, when you say just a little, that’s basically your equivalent of yelling that you’ve been right all along and have five powerpoints full of proof.”
Bernard was silent for a minute.
“Bernard, tell me you don’t have a powerpoint.”
He just shrugged slightly, grinning sheepishly. “Look, I only made one. So calm down.”
“Oh, my god.” Tim let his face drop onto the table, narrowly missing his nearly-empty mug. Why him? Why was it always him? Bet Dick and Jason and Robin don’t have to deal with this shit. Granted, that’s because none of them have actual lives outside of vigilante stuff – oh jesus, how was Tim the only one who had an actual life that he kind of liked outside of bat-stuff? How sad was that?
Tim could not be the best one in their family at functioning normally and socialising with people who didn’t carry swords around with them. How were they that bad? Jesus. Maybe they did need therapy.
“Hey, calm down, stop being so dramatic.”
Tim lifted his face up, raising a single eyebrow.
“Shut up, I’m a reasonable amount of dramatic. Anyway, here, you can check my plan!”
Bernard shoved the piece of paper he had been waving around at him. Tim took it reluctantly, eyes skimming the page –
“Bernard, you are not jumping off of a fucking building.”
“Yeah, I thought that one was pushing it.” Tim noted that Bernard sounded oddly disappointed. Which was probably mildly concerning. But also-
“Or getting kidnapped.”
“Jury was out on that one too, I’ll be honest.”
Other than those two, most of the ideas seemed fairly – well, sane might be pushing it – no, sane was definitely pushing it, no way was he letting Bernard try to get his hands on Kryptonite, why was that even on the list, what the fuck – but they at least weren’t going to end up in anyone dying. Probably.
“I kinda wanted to try stabbing him slightly, but I would have felt bad about that one.”
Tim wasn’t even going to justify that with a response.
“Wait, can you explain plan four to me? Or six? What the fuck does weed and Red Robin even entail? Those aren’t plans, they’re bullet notes, Bernard, do I need to teach you how to outline a plan properly?”
“I’m very glad that my lacking ability to outline plans is what gets you functioning normally. I was starting to regret mentioning the jawline, I’ll be honest.”
Tim groaned. “And, congrats! You made it weird again!”
“Oh come on, please?” Bernard whined. “I’ll stop talking about your friends’ very defined, muscular arms, like wow-“
“You’re doing this on purpose now.”
“Yup.”
And Tim – well, Tim already knew he was going to give in. Even though it was a colossally bad idea and he’d absolutely have to hide this from Bruce because he would lose his shit and Jason was going to make so much fun of him when he figured it out and oh god Steph-
“So when do you want to invite him over? I reckon about a week would be good. Oh my god, I can’t wait to meet the famous Corn.”
“You know his nickname’s Kon, right? Not Corn. I have never called him Corn. Like, ever.”
Tim sat up straight so fast that he almost jarred his back, his brain switching from moping and in shock to hey maybe something good could come out of this faster than Bart could eat pizza.
“If you call him Corn to his face I will absolutely forgive you for how utterly insane this entire thing is.”
Bernard grinned widely, reaching out a hand to grasp Tim’s in a firm handshake.
“Done.”