Chapter Text
What was he doing?
Kneeling on the floor in front of him, Kon, his best friend, and Superboy is looking up at him with the most demanding but pitiful looking eyes he's ever seen. Holding Tim's hand after guiding it through his hair and around the curve of his face, Tim…
Tim doesn't know what to do with it.
It started this morning, with Kon skulking into the kitchen with the confidence of a newborn foal. Shoulders tense, and feet dragging, Tim assumed something was seriously wrong with him before they met eyes and Kon turned away from the kitchen on a dime.
Head turned down and running, Tim could practically see the tail slipping between his legs as he not-so-subtly bolted out of the room.
When it happened, Bart and Cassie had shot him a look so concerned that he lost his appetite entirely. He did something. Something wrong. Something that made Kon, ever the confident and flirtious super, run away.
Narrowly avoiding an interrogation he did not have all the answers for, he hastily made his way towards the control room and plopped into the office chair. Launching into the task of replaying the conversations had throughout last night's patrol until he can find something concrete.
All he had for breakfast that morning was the thick swallow of saliva that dropped like mud down into his belly. Phlegm-like sensation making his stomach churn with unease as he click, click, clicked away.
If he said something, he has to catch it, and when he catches it he'll make sure to never repeat the mistake again.
Still, the interaction itself was deeply concerning. Slip ups like this shouldn't cause their friendship to hang so precariously, at least not this easily. It bothers him because that means he missed something, Tim never misses anything.
Analyzing the data from last night, he listens to every conversation until he stumbles upon one where Kon goes quiet for exactly fifteen seconds according to the audio waveform. If he knows his best friend, he knows he does not do long pauses or awkward silences.
Turning on the video feed from everyone's cameras to assess further, he watches with surgical patience as the recording plays:
"What the hell? What do you mean they're $17.50?" Kon asks, clearly offended by something outrageously overpriced.
"I'm telling it like it is. One decent latte at B&B is literally $17 dollars off rip." Cassie replies, firm in her accusation of the over priced coffee shop.
Was that really all that surprising though? It's Gotham they're talking about. The rent might be cheap but the convenience sure isn't.
"And people pay for that?"
"They literally wrap around the store in a line for it."
"There's no way. After patrol we need to go cause I need to see this."
"I was just about to pop by B&B to see if the line is still circling the building." Bart cuts in, jogging in place to keep himself entertained.
"Guys, can we focus, please? I know the waiting is boring but we can talk about coffee another time." Tim finally chimes in, he was wondering when he'd include himself in this conversation.
"Red, what are we doing currently that prompts me to immediately halt my very important conversation about overpriced coffee? Which, if I seem to recall, I've seen you lining the block for as well on your off days." Cassie indicts with a playful lilt, pointing a finger and waving it at nothing. Kon snickers next to her.
Tim scoffs at that, both in the recording and in real life.
"Maybe our perps walking out of the building right now? Which you and Kon could stand to pay a little more attention to as the strongest people here."
"Aw, fuck." Kon grunts, springing into action, Cassie follows right behind him.
"Damn it, I hate it when he's got good timing!" Cassie groans, landing on the ground next to Kon with a heavy thud. Even while being lectured their presence was still unmatched in a fight.
"That wasn't good timing. That was me paying attention. We'll talk about it later."
"We have detention, bro." Cassie remarks and Kon falls quiet right then.
It lasts fifteen seconds like he concluded before the recording began. Letting it go on a little longer for any additional information, Tim walks away from a few perps now tied up on the ground and Kon breathes a heavy sigh, adjusting his gloves.
Nervous tick. How'd he not notice it? Kon does that every time he's trying to regulate. It doesn't clear much of anything up, though. What part of the conversation specifically triggered that response?
Was it Tim's comment about them paying more attention? Was it Cassie phrasing Tim's after-brief as detention?
Maybe it was a little bit of both.
Tim sat back in his chair and watched the conversation play out again. Where Kon initially starts to feel nervous is when Tim suggests they pay more attention to what's happening around them. Kon adjusts his gloves as he moves to stand.
His second indication of unease is when Cassie says they have detention instead of a post-mission debrief. His punches waver just barely from the input.
The third is when Tim walks up to them after the fight, the part of the video where he originally caught the tick.
It was Tim.
He was the one making Kon nervous.
Now the real question was if this was a one time thing, and that he should just learn to rephrase the call outs of their mistakes, or if it's been ongoing and Tim has just never noticed until now.
Which, in that case, would be unacceptable.
Second to the World's Greatest Detective and he can't even see when he's making his best friend, and quite possibly, the entire team uncomfortable?
This shall not stand, no hint of humor detected.
So with failure in mind, he watches. Sits at the computer screen for hours analyzing every interaction he's had with his team and Kon on the side throughout the entire month they've been active.
It's painstaking, a task he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy, yet he persists. Because if it is true that he's failed somewhere, he will not make the same mistake a hundredth time.
Pulling out a blank spreadsheet, he begins to note, date, and timestamp every interaction in the past month that has felt strained or awkward after he said something. The results are… unpleasant, to say the least.
Analyzing the words he chose, how he phrased them, and the tone at which he delivered them, he comes to only one reasonable conclusion:
He is the problem.
Leaning back in his chair with a heavy sigh, he drops his mouse with a riled clatter and runs a hand through his hair. Scratching the top of his head, he stares woefully at the spreadsheet with irrefutable proof that he's the in the wrong and scowls at it.
He hated being wrong.
He hated doing things wrong.
Tim was meticulous, and often called a perfectionist by the gaggle of heroes in his group. He always thought they bestowed him that term because they found his overthinking funny, not because they found it annoying.
How dense can he be? To miss something so simple? Kon was upset with him because he couldn't read the room. He couldn't read it even if there were instructions on the walls.
Sliding a clammy hand down his face, he pushes away from the computer and stands up. Grabbing his laptop to present his spreadsheet with, he makes a beeline for Cassie's door. Faced with no other choice than to confront his own shortcomings, he bites the bottom of his lip hard before knocking on the door to her room.
It takes about ten seconds for her to answer. Tim is about to knock again before the door finally slides open with a familar hiss.
"Tim…? Why're you outside my door this late? It's like… 2 AM." Eyes widening at the information, he checks his phone and it is indeed 2 AM. 2:13 AM, to be exact. Was he really at the computer all day.
Not important - what is important is that of course he comes to bother Cassie when she's literally sleeping. Why doesn't he ever think to look ahead? He always stays up late doing something at the main console, it's not a secret, why didn't he check the time?
He definitely wasn't earning any pity points from Cassie now about his bad behavior. Though, if she ever gave him pity in the first place for lacking in certain qualities he'd ask where the real Cassie is and what she's done with her.
"Tim?" Cassie sighs, resting her head against the door frame as his thoughts snap back into place.
"Sorry. I didn't realize what time it was. I was going to talk to you about something important but,”
But nothing. This could wait if it needed to, Tim's just always been impatient. Another redeeming quality, of course.
"It's—it can wait till tomorrow. If you want to rest now, I mean." Putting a fist to his lips, he clears his throat awkwardly before shifting the laptop behind him. Cassie looks him up and down like he's grown a second head then grabs his arm, dragging him inside.
"We'll talk about whatever the heck that was later. For now, show me what's on the laptop Sherlock, before I make you." Door closing behind them with another hiss, his cheeks puff out with a mildly petulant sigh before setting himself down on her bed and opening the computer.
She sits next to him, facing perpendicular as she waits for his thoughts to load.
Now that Tim was looking at the spreadsheet again, he immediately lost all confidence in himself when faced with the reality of the situation. Tim definitely feels insecure about what he's discovered, Cassie is undoubtedly going to notice that insecurity.
STATEMENT: Cassie is not going to sugarcoat whatever she has to say about Tim's recent failures. As is her brand.
QUERY: Did any of the footage he had suggest that she cared about the way he spoke in the first place?
CONCLUSION: It did not, her body language spared no indication of agitation or anxiety throughout any of their conversations. Perhaps there were moments of irritability with his consistent post-mission debriefs with Cassie specifically - but none of the interactions suggest she was actually upset with him.
It was only Kon that was upset with him.
So why did he come over here in the first place?
Tired of waiting, Cassie yanks the computer out of Tim's hands and he flails. Pushing his face away with one hand and scrolling with the other, he vehemently protests her snooping until it's too late.
Brows furrowing, she reads over the particular conversation about the coffee and turns her gaze towards him. A chill runs up his spine and his lips downturn. Did he get it all wrong? Was he really just overthinking this and Kon's nervous tick that he's spent years tuning his attention to wasn't actually a tick at all and he's been wrong the whole time? He doesn't know if he can handle the whole time. He'd have to make a spreadsheet for that, and by that point he'd be asking if he and Kon were ever even friends.
Were they ever even friends?
Hands slamming on his shoulders, he's ripped out of his downward spiral as Cassie squeezes him gently.
"There you are." She says softly, rubbing the palms of her hands up and down his sleeve covered arms. Generating warmth that seeps into his skin with every stroke. It was nice, grounding.
"In for four, hold for seven, out for eight." She chirps mechanically, they've all done this breathing exercise a thousand times by now. Yet, he does exactly as told.
In for four.
His chest expands slowly, nose adjusting to the refrigerated air of Cassie's room.
Hold for seven.
Eyes closed, his lids shift with the movement of blind gaze, searching for a light he won't find in here.
Out for eight.
Sighing deeply, the tension in his shoulders relaxes. Head drooping from the weight of his insecurities.
"Good. Let's do that a few more times."
A couple deep breaths later and Tim is back to at least moderately stable. If only the tremor in his hands would cease then he'd pass for perfectly well.
"Okay. Talk to me. You made an entire spreadsheet about your team leadership skills and Kon's reactions towards them. Why?" Tim turns sheepish, lips quirking to the side with a pink tint to his cheeks.
"It wasn't just Kon's reactions…"
"The majority of the sheet is about Kon, dude. Out with it."
Lulling his head to the side, he takes another deep breath before finally speaking his mind.
"I think I'm inadvertently ruining Kon and I's friendship." Pinching the covers, he plays with a loose string as Cassie considers how to respond.
"O-Kay, and why do you think that? I know what was on the sheet, but I need to hear it from you. You tend to catastrophize, after all." This conversation is truly doing wonders for his self confidence. How much worse can he get?
Eye twitching nigh-imperceptibly, he bites the inside of his lip before speaking.
"In all of these conversations - including the visual footage - Kon seems to express a certain amount of… anxiety towards any comments I make about his decisions on missions."
"Kon likes to do things his own way, you know this." She tilts her head, stating the obvious. He nods, the uneasy feeling in his chest not made any lighter by the fact.
"I do, but this isn't normal behavior. I looked back at least a month to find where this all started. I couldn't pin down an exact date - I believe it was around the end of May or so when things were really kicking off on that Black Manta case - but that's when Kon began to feel particularly unsettled by my off-handed remarks." Ripping the loose string out of the comforter, he plays with the sleeve of his shirt next, picking at a raised thread on the forearm of his clothing.
"Better than your face." Kon would probably say, and he'd be absolutely right. He should've gone to him, instead. Sorted it out like adults instead of pushing this all onto Cassie.
"He only responds that way when I have critique for him. Especially when it comes to wanting to see everyone for post-mission debrief. That's when he feels the most unsettled, and I know because I monitored his heart rate."
"You're kind of a stalker, you know that?" He rolls his eyes, hiding the brief feeling of diffidence he gets from her words.
"Additionally, Kon becomes very quiet after post-mission debriefs and stays quiet up until he takes off his suit. How I didn't notice this before is beyond me, but I fear it's because I became too comfortable with the trust I have in our relationship."
"Wait, so you don't trust Kon?" Cassie asks, confused.
"No, I do. I just don't think he trusts me."
"Because of your critiques?"
"Yes." The room falls quiet again.
STATEMENT: Cassie doesn't know what to make of this. The look on her face telling him as much.
QUERY: Would talking to Kon directly about his mistakes offer more clarity into the situation?
PREDICTION: Kon will become even more distant because of Tim's meddling. They will stop being friends and everything will fall apart after all.
"I don't think it's entirely because of your critiques, Tim." Cassie cuts off his thoughts, the raised thread he was picking at has now come loose, a small hole in the center of the cotton covering his forearm.
"I actually think it's because Kon admires you and wants to do good by you." She leans forwards, hoping her serious posture will get it through Tim's head that Kon does like him, it just might be a little too much.
"Wants to… but Kon's his own person. He's always had his own agenda - or - no, that's not the right word, his own… ambition," he waves his hands around vaguely, "that he brings to the entire; 'I'm part of the Superman family, but I don't want to be part of someone else's shadow,' part of being a hero."
"You said 'part' three times." Cassie has somehow gained bags under her eyes from that almost unintelligible sentence. God, maybe he's tired, too.
"Aside from that, I know Kon's got his own punk hallmark that he's bringing to the symbol on his chest, but that doesn't have anything to do with how he feels about you."
Tim huffs, frustrated. His shoulders sag and brows furrow, fingers that were picking at the hole in his clothes falling into his lap.
"I don't understand." She nods, agreeing. Did she always have to be so direct?
"Kon cares a lot about your opinion towards him. He thinks you're really cool, which he's told me himself off record so stop questioning it - I can see you questioning it - and he just wants you to think he's cool and doing a good job, too." Tim blinks a few times, processing the new information. He needs to go back and look at all the footage with this fresh approach.
"But this is also a conversation you need to have with Kon personally. He's usually asleep by now cause he's an old man that gets sleepy by 10:00 if you give him a bed and a weighted blanket, but he might be up for you to talk to. Unless you'd like to save it for tomorrow and I'll take Bart somewhere so you can have this apparently much needed conversation."
Tim exhales, lips flapping as he pulls the lid of the laptop closed.
"Tomorrow is good." He needs to reconsider his approach, anyhow. Tonight is the perfect time to do that.
"Okay. Are you going to go to bed after this.
"Yes, I will. I just need to figure out how I'm going to approach the conversation tomorrow, then I'll go to sleep."
"Don't you think Kon would prefer you didn't script the entire conversation you're going to have before you get to it?" She quirks a brow, Tim looks genuinely taken aback.
"But then how will I respond accurately?"
"By doing what you did literally tonight. Reading his micro expressions and body language like the detective you are. Kon's not going to want scripted responses, you know better than anyone that he's always following his heart. You should try it sometime, for this conversation in particular." Pointed without pointing. That's one way to beg someone to stop clinging to the reigns.
Flattening his lips, he does the breathing exercise again then wraps his finger around the loose thread on his sleeve, ripping it off like a metaphorical band-aid.
"Fine." And so the conversation ends, and Tim gets the worst sleep of his life while trying not to think about how he may be ruining things with Kon. Riddled with anxiety about how the situation could possibly play out tomorrow.
He can't help but create a rough draft in his head about how he thinks the conversation will go come morning. He's not going to use it, he'll keep to his word, but it's the only thing that gets him to sleep.
Tim can't live without knowing his next move, and tomorrow he's being thrown into the deep end.
All he can hope for is that he doesn't permanently ruin he and Kon's relationship after choosing to wander in blind.