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At first when he feels small, strong hands pressing urgently against his pecs, Conner swears that he’s just having another one of his regularly scheduled Tim Drake-centered wet dreams. He’d know those hands anywhere even if he was unconscious, but there’s no way that Tim would be feeling him up in the middle of the night--
“God, Conner, I’m not feeling you up,” Tim hisses and Conner tries in vain to hold on to the hope that he’s still sprawled out across the couch in the tower sleeping off the sugar high from Bart’s earlier run to every single ice cream man in the state. “Get up!”
Tim’s frustrated voice echoes right next to Conner’s ear and the other teenager experiences a split second of panic because this is not how those dreams are supposed to go.
Usually Conner manages to get to second base at least before his evil subconscious gives him a glimpse of a deliciously snarky Tim scowling down at him. That particular tone of voice usually doesn’t come into play in his dreams until the Tim he’s dreamed up has already been thoroughly debauched and Conner is pitching a tent in his boxer shorts back in the waking world.
“Conner!”
Slowly, Conner cracks one eye open, praying silently to any cosmic entity out there that he’s wrong and Tim Drake is nowhere near the living room of the Titan’s Tower.
It takes less than a second for Conner’s vision to adjust to the cloying darkness, but once he can see, he has to fight the urge to bury his face between the couch cushions and smother himself until he passes out. Instead, Conner drags himself to a seated position with his back pressing into the arm of the couch and tries to offer a smile at his best friend as the smaller teenager looks up at him from where he is crouched down next to the couch, his face seeming almost naked without his mask.
(And Conner really shouldn’t be having thoughts that contain the words “naked” and “Tim” in the same sentence. Not if he wants to keep his head where it is…)
“So,” Conner starts to say as he kicks his leg lightly against the front of the couch (because the last time he didn’t pay attention to his strength, he wound up buying the team a new couch…and coffee table… and TV set…), “That wasn’t a dream was it?”
Tim shakes his head, ungelled hair falling down into his eyes. “Not even close,” Tim admits as he rises smoothly to his feet and takes a seat on the couch almost on top of Conner’s bare feet. “Did you know you talk in your sleep?” When Conner shakes his head and gapes at Tim with his mouth hanging partially open, Tim shakes his head and the left side of his mouth quirks up in an aborted smile that is quickly replaced by a neutral expression. “Well you do. And you’re loud.”
Tim isn’t exactly smiling over at Conner, but he’s not frowning either and if that doesn’t bode well for Conner not getting his ass kicked by Batman and Nightwing for hurting their Robin’s feelings… Well, Conner doesn’t know what would.
And then Conner lets Tim’s words stew in his brain a little while longer. “Waitaminute,” he blurts out in a fast rush or words that feels more like something Bart would say when he’s tired of his friends taking so long to talk. “Did I wake you up? Why didn’t you say anything?”
Tim rolls his eyes and leans back against the opposite arm of the couch with his pajama clad legs legs resting atop Conner’s bare ones. “What do you think I was doing out here?” Tim asks with one neat black eyebrow raised as high as it can go. “I wasn’t fondling you at any rate.”
Conner at least has the grace to blush up all the way up to his ears as he ducks his head in an uncommon display of shyness that only seems to happen around Tim. “That was out loud too, huh?”
This time when Tim nods, he smiles a bit so that Conner can see it and curls his long toes against Conner’s bare calf in a gesture that’s supposed to be all companionable and shit. However, the casual touch only manages to make Conner’s breath catch in his throat in a tiny gasp that no one without super hearing should be able to notice.
“And you didn’t wake me up,” Tim confesses half a heartbeat later as he leans his head against the side of the couch and looks at Conner with an unreadable emotion simmering in the depth of his dark blue eyes. “I couldn’t sleep and when I came out to make tea, you were on the couch making noise and drooling on the cushions.”
Conner opens his mouth to speak, but the words drift away and leave him gaping silently as Tim cocks his head and looks at him expectantly.
“Yes, Conner?”
He shakes his head and then smiles at Tim. “Do you want to watch a movie or something?” he asks, already reaching for the universal remote that controls all of the tech in the downstairs entertainment system. “I’ll keep your company if you don’t mind.”
Tim blinks over at Conner as though he’s surprised. “You don’t have to--”
“I know,” Conner interjects with a smile on his face that doesn’t feel forced in the least. It’s his turn to nudge Tim, but instead of doing it with his toes, he chooses to ruffle the shorter teen’s dark hair with his TTK until it looks like a bird’s nest. “But I want to.”
And it’s true, Conner thinks to himself as Tim swats at him and then settles back against the couch with his long legs stretched out in front of him and a small smile on his face that speaks volumes enough.
As much as Conner enjoys his dreams that have Tim sweaty and splotchy underneath him, there’s nothing that he likes more than the real-life moments of intimacy that he shares with Tim. It’s not dating or a happily ever after, but what Conner has with Tim works and he wouldn’t change that for anything in the world.