It's a bit unusual — he usually comes awake all at once, his mind suddenly going into alert mode. And yet, there are sometimes days like this when his overloaded brain decides to take a break and lets him take his time.
First come the sounds: a soft hum not unlike some white noise that's supposed to help you fall asleep, a quiet clicking sound that has no obvious rhythm to it — not a clock, then — and the faintest sound of traffic from somewhere. Then, Tim feels the pleasantly cool, silky sheets under him, and the fluffy pillow under his head, and a heavy, perfectly weighted blanket on top of him.
He doesn't rush to open his eyes. Doing that would mean actually coming to terms with being awake, and he's not quite there yet. He still wants to enjoy this unexpectedly lazy morning.
Only, then there's a quiet, shuffling sound coming from just beside him, and that snaps Tim into awareness in less than a moment.
Is he not alone?..
He sits up in bed.
That's not his room. Nor is it any of his safe houses, or backup apartments, or any place he knows at all. Not a hotel, either — the bedroom looks lived in and luxurious, even more so than something Damian, with his heir-to-an-ancient-bloodline crap can dream of. The bed itself has a floating fucking canopy with shimmering stars moving over it like they're alive.
But that's all secondary; he can figure out where he is later. Right now, he needs to figure out who-
Or, correction, what he's woke up in bed with?
Because whatever is sleeping on the other side of the bed is distinctly not human. It... resembles the shape, sure, but even that is up for debate: Tim can't figure out the outline of their body. It's all blurred lines and twisting shapes, a void of shadows laying under the dark blue covers, wisps of black lazily moving in the air where their head should be. Looking at it directly kind of hurts Tim’s brain; it's like that feeling you get when you walk past a dark alley — you can feel something's there, but you don't look, because if you do, you know you won't find anything out of the ordinary.
Also, that low hum he was hearing when he just woke up seems to be coming from... that. Them.
Also also, Tim has no clothes on. As in, none, zero clothing items on his body, which is not great in general, but together with the rest of the clues just sends him straight into mild panic.
Did he?.. No, no-no-no, what the fuck, he couldn't have- There's no way- What was he even doing last night?!
The peacefully sleeping creature of void shifts again. Tim holds his breath — he just needs a few more moments to come to terms with this situation — but it doesn't help. His maybe one night stand flops on their back and huffs.
And then they reach their hands up over their head and stretch, back arching, and they yawn, and there's bright, lime green light coming from somewhere in their throat which makes their mouth actually illuminated from the inside, and they have a green tongue, and those teeth don't look like they are real — none of their body parts looks real — and-
"M'rning," they say, and Tim is momentarily taken aback. Because, after all that eldritch nonsense, their voice sounds way too normal. It's just a voice; low and groggy from sleep, definitely masculine, but otherwise just plain ordinary.
He looks up into the being's eyes. They are the same lime green (not very surprising at this point), glowing a bit (again, not surprising), and there's five of them, just scattered over their upper face (okay, a little surprising).
Tim blinks.
The cryptid blinks back. With all their eyes at once.
"Why do you-" they start saying, but then seemingly notice their unearthly appearance and make a slightly frustrated noise, "Ah, right, my bad."
In the next moment, the pitch black, shadowy color fades like someone dissolves it, and Tim is looking at a perfectly normal guy. Pale white skin, blue eyes (just the two of them, which is the normal amount of eyes to have), black hair.
And dozens of weird, smudged black marks on his body. Mostly around his neck, but some of them are trailing down his chest, and, oh, they look like-
"Are those lipstick marks?" Tim asks, which is probably the least important thing to ask, but.
The guy grins and reaches up, running a finger over Tim’s lips as he just sits there, stunned and confused. "Yeah," he confirms, "It looked great on you. Dark and dramatic is definitely your style."
Tim sucks in a sharp breath and closes his eyes, rubbing at his temples like that can help him just straight up banish this whole morning from his head.
But if he's getting his clues right, and he usually prides himself in doing so, then it looks like he's just spent a night with a fucking Lovecraftian horror in a skin of a human. And his body feels like it's been great. Which is just brilliant, right.
"Hey, is this a good time to ask if you remember agreeing to become High King's Consort, or do you want to talk about that after we get breakfast?" Comes a casual, nonchalant question a moment later, and Tim nearly chokes on his own breath.
Agreeing to become the fucking what?!
~•~•~•~
At first, I thought about doing something dark and dramatic, like the events of the previous night, when they've actually met. But I'm going through some shit right now and I wanted something nice to cheer myself up, so. There's that.
I really hope you like it, and here's a bonus aesthetic for this piece!
