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There are a few things Bart won't do. He won't run when he can't see, he won't ski no matter how many times somebody calls him a chicken, and he won't eat sushi. At first it was just because raw fish was gross times a trillion (and maybe because Kon had told him once that if he ate baby fish eggs some of them might stay inside him and hatch), but now Bart's read way too much about mercury poisoning and PCBs and toxic waste to let any of that crap get near his mouth.
Bart also doesn't know how to swim except for dog paddling. He's read books about various swimming techniques, but he hasn't bothered to try any of them out because he can run on water, and that's so much cooler than the Australian crawl. Which is a dumb name because not even Bart can crawl on water, but whatever.
Anyway. There are a few things Bart won't do; reprogramming Cyborg's computers so the Titans Tower is all networked up to play Halo 2 on Xbox Live is not one of them.
"Touch my computers again," Cyborg says as he sits down and picks up a controller, "and I will take out your other kneecap."
"Okay," Bart tells him, because doing this a second time would be boring unless he reprogrammed everything in Interlac, but it also probably wouldn't be worth another decade or two of horrible pain in subjective time. Next time he wants to play, though, Bart probably will just ask, because Vic's joining the fight to provide reinforcement for Gar, who's getting his furry green butt handed to him by Kon, Cassie, and Bart.
"Hm," Tim says right next to Bart's ear. Bart jumps and fumbles his controller, but he uses his speed to grab it out of the air in time to pick up a skull. "Nice work."
"Are you gonna play?" Bart asks hopefully. The weekends are so short and it's like they never have enough time to spend with each other, let alone time to do anything fun. Bart's pretty sure they need fun right now or else something big is going to explode, and that always makes the JLA act like jerks.
Tim just stands there, arms crossed under his cape. "I have work to do."
"Dibs on Robin!" Gar calls.
"You can't have him, he's ours!" Kon yells back.
"You afraid we're going to whip your scrawny little butts?" Victor asks.
The corner of Tim's mouth lifts up. "Careful, Cyborg. Bart's their secret weapon."
Bart grins widely and proves Tim right a second later. "Cool!"
"Shit!" Vic says. "Then sit down and even the odds a little, boy wonder!"
Tim hesitates for another moment and then leaps over the back of the couch, settling next to Bart. "What playlist are we using?"
It's almost normal, except for how they all know it totally isn't. They're all waiting for Tim to talk about it.
Tim's dad died. Tim's dad died and he wasn't going to tell them. Bart wants to be angry about it. Bart is kinda angry about it, but he also knows how long it took Robin just to tell them his name, and Bart remembers that he really didn't want to talk about what was happening when Max was dying, either. But he told his friends about it eventually. Bart just has to be patient.
Bart sucks at patient. He can't even stop himself from getting bored while waiting for the lights to come on, and waiting for Robin to talk is like waiting for light from other galaxies. Argh.
After they finish the game Bart zips out of the tower and takes a run through the city, stopping a mugging and a carjacking and a purse-snatcher and a kid on a shiny new skateboard about to eat the front of a semi, which is something Bart thought he was done with after Rolly gave up his daredevil career back in Manchester. Bart runs around the city a few more times, peers enviously inside eight tattoo parlors, and then zips back to the tower. He can see Tim on the roof, so Bart runs up the side of the building and flops down next to him.
"Hey, Bart," Robin says.
Bart doesn't really know where to start, so he just opens his mouth and lets some words fall out. "I never knew my dad." Tim doesn't say anything, but he's not getting up and stomping off like he usually does when Bart gets him peeved, so he keeps going. "He and my aunt died overthrowing an invasion by the Dominators. I didn't know my mom for a really long time, either. The closest thing I had was Max."
"Do you miss him?" Tim asks. He's staring straight up at the sky and Bart can't see his eyes.
"Yeah," Bart says. "All the time." He misses Max a little less when he's around Robin. Maybe it's because Tim's good at making Bart feel safe, but like he still has a lot to learn. Bart doesn't want to make mistakes when he's around Robin, but if Bart does, he knows that Robin will help him fix them. "What was your dad like?"
Tim hunches on the edge of the roof like a gargoyle, the rising moon shining on his body armor. "He..."
"I bet he was cool," Bart says, swinging his feet. "He must've been really proud of you."
Tim flinches.
Bart's stomach bottoms out and he really wishes life had a reset button so he could take back what he just said, even though he doesn't know why he should. "Grife," Bart says. "Sorry, I just..." He jerks his thumb at the half-pipe he'd built on the tower roof. "Wanna skate?"
Tim doesn't move for an eternity. Just when Bart's thinking about vibrating himself through the roof as an emergency escape from the awkward, Tim stands up and unhooks his cape.
Tim's good at skateboarding. Tim's good at everything, and Bart knows that Max would have loved to teach someone like him rather than Bart. He can't imagine why anyone wouldn't be proud to be Robin's dad. If Tim's not good enough, what chance does Bart have?
Eventually Tim goes inside to check his e-mail. Bart skateboards for another three seconds while he considers how weird it would be to get batmail from the Batman about freaky bat things, and then he zips to Kon's room. Kon's sitting at his desk with another book open in front of him.
"DoyouthinkRobin'sgoingtobeokay?" Bart asks in a rush, sitting on Kon's bed and rumpling the covers. Kon slams his hand down on the notebook paper on his desk to keep it from blowing away.
"Huh?" Bart waits for his super-hearing to catch up. "Oh. It's just... a lot's happened to Tim lately, dude."
Bart watches Kon tap his mechanical pencil against his homework. Sometimes Kon and Tim make him feel like a third wheel. They probably don't mean to. Bart usually isn't the first person people go to when they have a problem, but still... they used to do things together. They used to stand against the whole world together. They used to have campouts with pizza and marshmallows and Kon telling stupid ghost stories and Tim telling scary ghost stories together.
"He made me promise not to tell anybody," Kon says, and Bart realizes that he's been silent long enough to freak Kon out. Score. "Maybe if you ask him about it?"
Bart scrunches his face. "Did the Kryptonite ray give you brain damage?"
Kon snorts and rubs his hand over his hair. "No, but I think reading The Great Gatsby did."
Bart read it a few weeks ago. He can recite the entire thing from memory, but that doesn't help him understand what it means. Tim probably knows what it means. Grr.
"Do you think Tim's going to be okay?" Bart asks again.
"He has to be okay," Kon says with a weird, shifty-eyed look, like he's been keeping secrets of his own. "Hey. Wanna do my English homework?"
"Not unless you wanna fail," Bart says, and speeds away.
Bart still has trouble going to bed at what Max would have called a decent hour, but there usually isn't much in the way of super villain carnage on Sunday mornings anyway, so at 2 o'clock in the morning Bart's in his room listening to music with his headphones on and playing games on the internet. And when Robin waves a gauntlet in front of his face, Bart startles hard, dumping white cheddar popcorn on the floor and pulling the headphone jack out of the computer. He plugs the headphones back in before his music can wake up Kon, scoops up his third way-past-midnight snack, hides his Robin action figure in the closet, and turns around while Tim still has his hand in front of Bart's computer monitor.
"Hi," Bart says. Tim folds his arms under his cape and it feels like he's a million miles away.
"Kon told me you two talked," Tim says.
Bart fidgets. "He didn't tell me anything."
Tim sits down on Bart's messy bed and Bart swivels his desk chair to face him. Their knees bump together. "Kon's my best friend."
"Yeah." Bart wonders if he can patrol again. Maybe he can patrol until morning and then go straight to the kitchen for some Chocolate Frosted Sugar Smacks. Robin hardly ever makes it to breakfast at the tower.
"But you're my best friend, too," Tim says. He clasps his hands between his knees and stares at them, his face blank. "I didn't tell Kon about my dad, you know. He found out from Superman."
"Okay." It shouldn't, but it does kinda make Bart feel better, like watching someone he doesn't like trip and fall on his face.
"My dad," Tim says, "he, uh... he didn't know about me being Robin. He found out a little while ago and he freaked. Made me promise to quit. So I did."
Tim pauses for a really long time and clenches his jaw. Bart just sits still and tries not to do anything that will make him stop talking.
"But then some bad stuff happened and I had to help, you know?" Tim looks up for a second, his eyes still hidden behind his mask.
Bart nods. He quit once, too, but he knows he'll never be able to quit for good unless he loses his powers. He can't not help.
"But then my girlfriend died, and my dad died, and I... I wasn't going to tell any of you," Tim says. He jitters his leg and his tights rub against Bart's jeans.
"But why?" Bart demands, leaning back in his chair and clenching his hands on his head. He pulls at his hair and wants to ask why why why why because Robin isn't supposed to be this dumb.
"I thought I could handle it on my own." Tim's voice is soft and small, and Bart's never heard him sound like that. Robin's always snapping orders and... and... defying Batman. Before Bart can think, he zips to his bed and wraps his arms around Tim and decides not to let go for a really long time.
"Bart," Tim says. His face is close, really close, and Bart's stomach gets all twitchy. Robin's one of his best friends, he likes Robin, Robin makes him feel stupid but in a good way, and he... likes Robin. He has to, because the last time Bart's stomach got twitchy was because of Carol, and he lost Carol before they could really do anything about it. Bart remembers the long five weeks when Robin hadn't come to Titans Tower, and thinks that he could lose Tim, too. He could go home to Gotham tomorrow and never come back, and Bart can't wait to figure this out all the way, so he kisses him.
Based on his (okay, limited) experience, it's always hard for Bart to tell how long a kiss has gone on before he gets kissed back. Girls usually kiss him first, but it seems like he's spent a couple hours kissing Tim and Tim still hasn't moved. But the second Bart pulls away Tim grabs Bart's T-shirt and yanks him back, and they're kissing again. Tim opens his mouth and Bart hears himself making a funny noise when Tim's teeth bite at his lips.
For a long time, Bart thought kissing was weird. Gross. The first time Carol kissed him they both ended up laughing because it was all lips and spit and huh? Years later when they tried it again, it felt a little like this. Like... warm and tingly and good deep in his belly, so he licks at Tim's mouth and his tongue and his teeth and puts his hands on Tim's bare neck.
"Bart, no --" Tim says, but he's breathing hard and his lips are red and his hands are under Bart's shirt.
"You're confusing me," Bart says. "That's always dangerous."
"Door," Tim says firmly.
Bart zips across his room and closes and locks it and zips back and says, "Door."
Tim pushes him down on the bed and straddles Bart's hips, his cape slithering over the bedspread. Bart's never done this. He's read books, a lot of very interesting books, like the Kama Sutra and the Gay Kama Sutra and some weird stuff from Japan with tentacles. But everything Bart's seen on TV makes him think they're missing a step, like --
"Shouldn't I, like, buy you dinner first? Does this mean you're easy? I heard Nightwing was easy. Is it a Robin thing? Because --"
Tim freezes for a moment, and then presses his face against Bart's chest and shakes. Bart grabs Tim's shoulders and wonders what he's supposed to do until he realizes that Tim's laughing. He hasn't heard Tim laugh in -- Bart can't remember, and he remembers almost everything. Tim laughs and shakes on top of him for a while, and Bart just pets Tim's hair and enjoys it. This is good, too. Almost as nice as kissing.
Eventually Tim sits up and takes off his mask, wiping tears from his blue, blue eyes. "Hey, Bart," he says, looking at the mask in his hands. "Can I sleep here tonight?"
"Are you sure you wouldn't rather sleep with Kon?"
Tim blinks. His dark eyelashes are wet and sticking together. Then his mouth curves into a slow smirk, and Bart has to yell "hey!" and speed-smack him with a pillow. Tim wrestles the pillow away from him, but not until Bart's smacked him enough to make Tim's hair stand up in a bunch of different directions.
Bart leers. "Take off your uniform and stay a while, soldier."
Tim stares. "Have you been watching porn?"
"It's on the internet!" Bart says, pointing wildly at his computer.
"Oh, god." Tim snorts and drops his face into his palm.
Bart pokes at Tim's body armor. "C'mon. It's late, even for me."
"Okay," Tim says. His voice is raspy from all the laughing and it makes Bart's body hum. He memorizes the way Tim takes off his cape, gloves, belt, boots, and tunic, just in case he'll get undress Tim himself sometime. When Tim climbs into the bed wearing a T-shirt and his tights, Bart zips out of his jeans and into his pajamas, turns off the light, and snuggles against Tim's side while Tim's still pulling up the blankets.
"Missed you, fearless leader," Bart whispers against Tim's neck.
Tim rests his cheek on top of Bart's head. He doesn't say anything, but Bart doesn't mind. Tim's said enough already.