WIP excerpt for catboy-Jupiter behind the cut, who asked for something Timberkon and is getting “weird amnesia Timberkon”. (( chrono || non-chrono ))
“Please come over tonight, Kon,” Bernard says, which he’s pretty damn positive is cheating on his part. But like, who gives a damn if it is?
Just it’s probably been a while since the guy’s heard his own name, he figures. And either way, Kon sobs a lot harder when he says it.
So yeah, definitely Bernard is cheating, and definitely he is not gonna even pretend to be sorry about it.
Just–he’s too Gotham to know how else to do this, like he said.
“I–” Kon opens his mouth to just barely croak out, and then suddenly freezes, his wet, red eyes flaring wide and fingers digging white-knuckle hard into his arms. Bernard doesn’t even have time to open his own mouth before he’s suddenly alone at an empty table in a rush of wind and the front door is swinging shut.
“Dammit,” he mutters, then gets up, picks up his drink, and goes back to his and Tim’s table, because very fucking obviously that was either Kon hearing an urgently superhero-requiring thing or Kon hearing–
Tim rushes out of the back hallway looking only a little bit out of breath and rumpled and beelines back to their table. So yeah, that’s the “or” Bernard was expecting, pretty much. Like, pretty much exactly.
He’s betting Kon would’ve looked a lot less upset by being Super-required, if nothing else.
“Sorry! Sorry, uh, didn’t mean to take so long,” Tim apologizes awkwardly as he hurries up to the table, trying to smile and looking just a little bit anxious about it. Bernard assumes it’s the thing where Tim keeps expecting him to react like someone who didn’t know he wasn’t deliberately flaking on them all the time might be reacting to him “flaking” on them all the time.
“You’re fine, babe, I was on Reddit, I literally did not even notice that the passage of time was occurring,” Bernard lies wryly, raising an eyebrow at him. Well, he was briefly on Reddit, so it’s only low-key a lie. Like, some of those really poor-quality not-in-fact-Superboy pics were on Reddit. “You okay?”
“Yeah! Yup! Totally okay,” Tim says, then quickly ruffles his hair into order and surreptitiously shakes some gravel out of it in the process. It’s not a) pollen or b) covered in blood, so Bernard doesn’t worry about it.
What he worries about is the fact that Kon didn’t take his drink when he left. It’s stupid, a little, how much he’s worrying about that. Tim really never would forgive him if he wasn’t, though.
Like–if he were in possession of all the relevant information, anyway.
“So, uh, where were we?” Tim asks, smiling sheepishly at him as he sits back down, and Bernard smiles back and pretends to be as oblivious as Tim Drake’s boyfriend needs to be. Which is a little more ironic than usual, maybe, considering exactly who’s missing something in this situation.
Or like, someone, if he wants to get technical about it.
He really should’ve given Kon his phone number, Bernard thinks. Or some cash to go with the card, or some food, or maybe just his entire life savings. Or maybe just, like . . . he doesn’t know, just a damn hug or something. Somebody clearly needs to, Gothamite or not. Though it’s pretty safe to say that Bernard is not the specific Gothamite that the guy would want a hug from, given the choice and all, much less the person he’d want one from.
And it is definitely, definitely safe to say that Bernard is not the person the guy would want to be the only one to remember him, but apparently nobody in this situation is getting a choice about that.
So that’s a problem, yeah.
Or, you know, a total fucking crisis that’s gonna give him total fucking nightmares because everything else aside, Gotham or Super or what the hell ever, Bernard is just not the person who’s equipped for this situation. Like–yeah, no. Not even slightly. That’d be his Bat-boyfriend, who currently has absolutely no idea that there’s even a situation going on here at all.
Which is, well, kinda part of the situation, isn’t it.
So yeah, definitely this is a total fucking nightmare of a situation, and Kon didn’t even do him the mercy of taking his damn drink when he ran for it.
Bernard keeps smiling at his oblivious Bat-boyfriend while Tim picks up the conversation exactly where they left off and really, really wishes that the guy would’ve at least taken his drink, stupid as it is. At least he took the card, even if that might’ve been an accident more than anything else, but . . .
'Nothing tastes like anything anymore, he’d said. And he’d just looked so damn sad, and so damn lost, and he’d cried because Bernard had recognized him, and cried again when he’d just called him his fucking name.
Bernard is not equipped for this situation and he’s way too Gotham to know what to do about Super problems and he’s awful with crying and he is definitely, definitely not the apparent one single person in the reality to remember him that Kon ever would’ve picked.
So like, that’s a lot of stuff he’s gonna have to fix about himself real damn quick, he guesses. No matter what he does, he’s not gonna be whoever Kon would’ve wanted to remember him and frankly he could not have less of an idea what to do next if he tried, but like . . .
Just–somebody’s got to do something, and Kon’s clearly tried everything he could think of himself; clearly run out of options and run out of hope. He needs at least a reason to hope this is fixable, if nothing else. A reason to think there’s a chance, and someone to at least try to help him. Bernard can do that. Like–he can try, at least.
Actually he kind of has to, or he’d never sleep right again. What decent fucking person could see somebody else all fucked-up and lost like that and not even try to help? And even if he could, Tim really never would forgive him if he didn’t.
Bernard’s pretty sure Tim’s already never gonna forgive himself, if they actually manage to fix this. Pretty much positive, actually.
Fuck, he wishes Kon had just taken the stupid drink.














