#background timbern

"You can't," Kon blurts out, way too fast to sound like a normal person.

"That's alright," Tim says reassuringly. "Which parts are a no? Or is all of it a no?"

"The— It's— You can't give me a mating bite," he says, almost apologetic.

"That's okay, that's a very common boundary," Tim says. "It's one of our boundaries, as well. But I needed to make sure that you would say no to something if it made you uncomfortable."

Kon almost explains that it isn't that he's uncomfortable — it's that they literally couldn't give him a mating bite. The only species strong enough to leave a permanent mating mark on his skin are species without secondary genders, so Kon will never be able to have a real mating bite.

"Um, and the other thing..." Kon flushes so hot, and it's ridiculous — he's literally naked and in heat, but he feels like such a loser when he confesses, "I'm not sure about the knotting. I've never actually, um..."

"You've never taken an alpha's knot?" Tim guesses gently.

"No, I-I have, just not in heat." He looks up when another strange sound comes out of Bernard. "I'm just not sure if that's something that I... I mean, I-I feel like I want it, but I don't want to say yes and change my mind later."

Bernard clears his throat roughly. "That's exactly why we're asking now, Kon. So you can set outside bounds for what happens."

Tim's voice comes through the speaker, softer now, more intimate even across the distance. "We stop at any point, for any reason. Even if you just need a break to breathe. That's not failing, that's taking care of yourself."

"That's helping us take care of you," Bernard adds. "So the best thing you can do is tell us if something changes. What I won't do is go past the boundaries we've already talked about, but you can always pull them farther in as you need to, okay?"

"Okay," Kon agrees, still feeling a bit dazed at the prospect of an alpha asking him to put up more limitations later on. That's just not how sex usually is, in his experience.

"We played with some toys last time," Tim says, and Kon feels himself start to blush again. "I know you didn't care for the silicone knots. Are there any you would like to use again?"

A few minutes ago, he probably would have mumbled his way through an excuse to avoid answering directly. With the way it's going though, Kon blushes but still manages to get out, "The-the clamp things. They made my omega feel settled, or something."

Tim groans deep in his chest, and it almost sounds like a growl even without the modulator. "You're so hot, so— fuck, sorry. Bernard, he's talking about the biters. He took all six for me at his peak. Looked so cute with all those sweet little teeth in his glands, then just rolled up close to ride my fist."

Bernard makes a strangled sort of noise. "Jesus," he mutters, sounding pained. "Yeah, I'll make sure to pull those out for him."

"I want you to enjoy yourself, Kon. Bernard will be so good to you. Won't you, my alpha?" Tim's voice goes a bit gritty, and Kon watches with interest as Bernard begins to flush. "You'll take care of Kon, pamper him and treat him right, just like you do for me? I want my best friend to know what a good, sweet alpha I have."

Kon looks up when Bernard makes a soft little sound of desire. He's biting his lower lip a little bit and has his head ducked, looking at the phone through his eyelashes in a picture of bashful invitation that's altogether very… omegaline.

The phone line crackles with Tim's quiet exhale, and Kon can practically see him rubbing at his temple.

"I have to go," Tim says regretfully. "Both of you, be safe, hydrate, eat, etc. And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do."

Bernard barks out a startled laugh. "Objectively, the worst possible advice," he says warmly. "Have a good flight, love."

His thumb traces the ridge of Kon’s knuckles, smoothing away any signs of tension. Kon's brain shorts out again when he ducks down to press a kiss on the back of his hand.

Kon swallows hard, desperate to maintain a facade of self-control. Now that his omega knows what Bernard's lips feel like, pursed into a gentle kiss against his skin, Kon is pretty sure he's never going to stop thinking about it.

"Skin is no problem."

Bernard tries to take off his shirt, but Kon's arms are still wrapped around his middle and in the way. He can tell that Bernard is about to ask him to move, but that's beyond unacceptable.

So, Kon resolves the situation the fastest way he knows how, without really thinking through it.

"Okay, wow," Bernard says, sounding impressed, kind of, his eyes wide as he takes in the shredded fabric fluttering down around them. "New kink unlocked."

"Sorry," Kon squeaks, mortified. He just ripped the guy's shirt off – Tim's shirt, he remembers, so now he owes Tim a new shirt on top of everything else – like some kind of depraved—

"Let me be clear. That was hot as fuck," Bernard replies emphatically. "Jesus, sweetheart, I'll put on new clothes as many times as you want to tear them off me like that."

Kon's ears burn even hotter, but now because the alpha had called him sweetheart. He's always been babe, or baby – or bitch, with some particularly shit-headed alphas – but he really, really likes sweetheart.

At first, Kon is a bit disappointed that he missed his chance to say yes please, take me like this and fuck me until it doesn't hurt anymore.

On the other hand, he's relieved that he doesn't have to choose between presenting while holding back a panic attack, or telling the nicest alpha he's ever fooled around with that his omega doesn't know how to trust him.

Before he can get too lost in his thoughts about any of it, Bernard's hands are in motion, and Kon goes pliant under his gentle touch. Together, they wordlessly arrange pillows and rolled edges of blankets to prop up his hips while Kon stays safely on his back.

Bernard shifts to kneel between Kon’s spread knees, and then he does let his eyes drop to look at the rest of him. The alpha’s gaze rakes over his naked body with so much weight Kon would almost swear he can feel it. Fingers hover, tracing invisible lines in the air just above Kon's skin, as though examining something too sacred to touch.

"You’re un-fucking-real," Bernard mutters, finally making contact to drag both palms up his stomach. His thumbs catch on the ridges of each abdominal muscle.

Kon holds back a squirm, torn between his omega's instinct to preen under his alpha's attention and his own instinct to hide. He doesn't know how to say he doesn't want to be touched there, doesn't want this attention where he's chiseled and gross instead of soft and squishy. His alpha should be able to grip handfuls of soft tummy, watch it jiggle and bounce, but that's not how he's built.

"Look at you," Bernard continues gruffly, and Kon really wishes he wouldn't. "Like someone carved you out of marble and brought you to life." He grins a little wickedly and adds, "But you're not stone, are you omega? Look how fast you melt for me."

His hands finally stop touching his stomach, but it might be worse that they skate higher, following the dip between his pectorals. Kon closes his eyes to avoid seeing the moment when he finds out what this part of his body is like.

Bernard won't be the first or last alpha to be disappointed when they go to cop a feel and find rock-hard muscle instead of plush fat under his skin. He's pretty sure that Bernard will be nice about it, at least.

“I mean, just look at these.” Bernard's voice is thick with so much awe, it's nearly uncomfortable to hear. “Perfect handfuls, aren’t they?”

His palms curve over the swell of Kon’s pectorals, squeezing experimentally, lifting like he’s testing the weight of them, like they’re something soft and yielding.

"Fuck, more than a handful," he groans. “Bet they bounce so pretty.”

Kon flushes hot from his hairline down to the tips of Bernard's fingers when he starts moving rhythmically, kneading with deliberate intent. The way his fingers dig in feels like his body is doing impossible things. Kon would swear he could really feel his body indenting under an alpha's hands, being held the way omegas are supposed to be.

The fantasy feels really good.

"Open those pretty eyes for me, sweetheart," Bernard commands quietly, palming his chest slower, but deeper.

Kon's eyelids flutter against his will as he fights the instinct to obey with the desire to keep them shut. As soon as he sees himself, he'll lose this fantasy of a body that moves the way he wants it to.

"Want to show you how much I like touching you."

So Kon blinks his eyes open, obviously. No matter what he wants to see, he's not going to deny his alpha who wants to show him that. His eyes focus in on where Bernard's hands are on him, and—

"Kon, will you look at me?"

Grudgingly, he does. Bernard is knelt as far forward as he can get without moving closer to the nest, his elbows balanced on his knees.

"Couldn't it be possible," the alpha says, so, so gently, "that the reason it doesn't sound like I'm lying is that I'm actually telling you the truth?"

"No."

"No?"

Kon shakes his head with a little hum, and the alpha's eyes turn so sad, he actually feels the urge rising to protect.

"Why not?"

He really hadn't wanted to have to explain this, but Bernard has systematically worn down every other excuse Kon has, until all that's left is the truth.

It would have been so much less painful if the alpha had just left when he gave the out. Now, Kon has to tell him just how super his senses are, and Bernard won't be able to talk his way out of what his endocrine system isn't doing in response to Kon's heat.

"Because I'd be able to tell if you wanted me." He says it too quietly, so quietly he hopes Bernard can't hear it.

But he does hear it, because just as quietly, he asks, "How?"

"I can…" He clears his throat, mostly to hold firm on his decision not to cry anymore. "I can smell things humans can't, part of the whole supersenses thing. If you wanted me, I'd be able to smell you signalling, even from here, even if you were trying to restrain it or wearing blockers."

A look of dawning realization takes over Bernard's face, before dropping into outright defeat and finally, finally dropping that intense gaze at Kon's face.

"Oh, shit," he breathes.

"Yeah, so…" Kon shrugs. It's out in the open now, that Bernard hasn't been fooling anyone. "Your scent has been neutral or less this entire time. So just… stop pretending."

"Fucking hell, Kon, I– I—" Bernard sighs heavily and scrubs his hands aggressively across his face and hair. "I am so fucking sorry. I thought I was helping by—"

"It's fine, man, I get it," he hurries to cut in. It isn't fine and he doesn't get it – has no idea how the alpha thought this would be helpful – but he just cannot deal with having to soothe an alpha's feelings right now. Just— maybe another time he could, but not after all this.

There's a low simmer in his gut that means another peak is going to start soon. He just wants to sleep, and maybe rub one out first, so he can sleep through as much of the wave as possible.

"Just one more way I'm—" Kon has to stop himself from saying 'wrong,' because he's going to lose the battle against crying if he finishes that sentence.

"I am blocking my scent," Bernard interrupts. "But not with blockers."

Not many alphas will square up to Kon like this — the ones that do are guarded at best, and openly combative at worst. More often, alphas just get uncomfortable about how much bigger his is, even when they're all squared up and puffed out as big as they can get.

"Kon, will you please eat something for me?" Bernard says. "Anything you want, even just a little bit. It's important to me that you're well-fed."

The alpha doesn't growl, and nothing about him threatens anger or violence. He speaks calmly and very clearly, as though he doesn't need to question whether Kon will do as he's told.

As a general rule, Kon grates under direct orders, especially from self-important alphas.

But this appeal to consider his own well-being, this confidence that Kon is going to be good -— not because he's intimidated or pressured, but just because… like just because he is good, like Bernard already knows he's good.

"Yes, alpha."

The words pop out of his mouth, raspy and unbidden. He'd be more embarrassed if he wasn't acutely aware of Bernard's heart speeding up at his words.

Bernard's face softens into a pleased half-smile.

"Thank you, dollface," he says, smooth as butter. He doesn't take his eyes off Kon until the bathroom door slips shut between them.

Merely wrestling his omega is no longer effective. Kon's gonna need to put it in a fucking suplex to survive, at this rate.

Feeling dazed, Kon pads on bare feet into the kitchen. The floor feels cooler than usual, and he's not sure if that's him being sensitive, his fever picking up again, or the weather outside.

There are a downright silly number of containers with blue lids in the refrigerator – and it's pretty much everything in the refrigerator, too. Every color of fruit is present, neatly cleaned and cut. Stacks of small identical containers seem to be dips, or maybe a soup of some kind. Some items, he can't identify on sight and makes a note to ask Bernard later.

A bit overwhelmd by options, his eye catches on a stack of shallow square containers that look an awful lot like fancy Lunchables.

"His heats are…" Weighing the reams of medical data he's collected on Kon against Bernard's safety, Kon's privacy, and time restraints, he settles on, "They're unusual. His peaks and valleys are extreme. He's just below baseline function between waves, but nearly nonfunctional when it's peaking."

"Jesus Christ," Bernard mutters. "I guess that explains a lot."

"Did something else happen?"

"Not really, he just started heat-babbling out of nowhere."

"'Heat-babbling'?" he repeats wryly.

"Um, you know, just the… like the nonsense stuff that comes out sometimes."

He sounds so shy, Tim can't help but ask, "Bern, what'd he say to you?"

"Nothing," he sighs defensively. "Just… the kinds of things you say. Nothing weird or whatever."

"Bern."

There's a thunk that Tim is pretty sure is Bernard's forehead hitting the table. "He said I smell like I'd knot him real good," he finally mumbles grudgingly.

Well, there's a fucking mental image. Not like Tim hasn't had that particular mental image several times in the past few weeks, but just—

Damn, it sounded good coming from his alpha's mouth.

"I mean, you do have a real good—"

"You— ungh," Bernard cuts him off with a groan. "Stop it, you. That doesn't help."

"You're right, I'm sorry," Tim chuckles quickly. "Are– are you okay?"

"I'm… a little stressed," Bernard admits. "But I checked, and I actually am off-peak this week, so I'm not as affected as I might have been. I mean, yeah, I've been rocking half a hard-on for a couple hours. But I'm not, like, at risk of psychosis or anything dramatic."

"That's… well, that's something, anyway," Tim replied distantly, unable to help the way his hindbrain and hormones both trip over his alpha getting turned on by Kon's scent.

It's a very arousing scent, in Tim's opinion, a combination of the air after a lightning strike and the last coals of a campfire. It's a very alpheline scent, as well, made of much deeper notes than Tim's own maternal bouquet or even Bernard's softer forest floor.

It isn't lost on Tim that that's part of why he likes Kon's scent so much, or why he feels a twist of desire in his gut at hearing that Bernard likes it, too. He's always been most attracted to softer alphas, the traditional alpheline traits never holding much appeal. Until, that is, he encounters them in other omegas.

When he first came out to his oldest brother as queer, Dick had made fun of him for hours, naming all the ways that Tim Drake was a 'go big or go home' kind of person, and that of course his queerness wouldn't be in half-measures either, and his type would end up being butch omegas and soft alphas.

So his soft alpha being turned on because of… well, Kon isn't his omega — not yet, his hindbrain proffers gleefully — but he is undeniably butch, and if Kon was into Tim in his last heat, and now Bernard is into Kon…

"—I wouldn't bring it up, except your friend, he's wearing a super interesting outfit, like super neat clothes this guy has, and I figure you obviously know about his super cool clothes and might panic thinking I wouldn't know. So, don't panic, 'cause I do, and I know that 'heirloom' under the bed isn't an emerald. So I think I'm as safe as I can reasonably be without literally abandoning ship, which is just not going to happen, obviously."

Obviously.

Tim would struggle to say he wouldn't make the same choice, but he's Robin, he's been trained for this, and anyway it's– it's Kon. There's obviously no risk to himself that wouldn't be worth it to be there for Kon.

Obviously, his alpha says, as though he wouldn't dream of putting distance between his very human body and an unstable Super, just because said unstable Super is an omega indistress.

Obviously.

Bernard sounds only slightly stressed when he adds, "Also, I feel like there might be unique needs here that I'm probably not qualified to address, so? Is there a hotline I should call for this, or…? Like 1-800-JUSTICE or…? I found some hacks on reddit to guard my scent so I don't trigger a rejection response and make it all worse for him, but I didn't know if maybe he has better scent receptors than most people or— Okay, I'm nervous rambling now, I'll talk to you soon."

To delete this message, pre—

Beep.

Message saved. Next message.

There's a half-second of silence that sends Tim into overdrive panic, then he hears a tiny throat clearing sound. "Hey babe," Bernard says softly, sounding slightly winded. "Just wanted to let you know that he woke up for a few minutes just now. He looked pretty rough, but he made it out to the kitchen. I think he was seriously trying to convince me that he's well enough to leave, but he didn't even make it a step away from the table before he passed out again."

A forced-calm breath tells Tim that Bernard is holding himself back from some big feelings, likely from his alpha side. "I don't think he's okay, Tim," he admits after a pause. "I– I don't have much first-hand experience with heats, but I've never heard of an omega swinging between lucid and heat-drunk like this. He's back in your nest — I looked very strong and manly while I carried him there, by the way, and not at all like I was wrestling a 200-pound sack of potatoes over the side."

Bernard huffs a little laugh and takes a deep breath again, and Tim wishes he could just hug his stupid, soft, 'let me fix it for you' alpha senseless.

"Anyway," Bernard sighs over the voicemail, "he's back in your nest. I'll call if he wakes up again before I hear from you. I'm trying not to be worried about him, but it's— Well. Just let me know what he needs, as soon as you can, please."

To delete thi—

Beep.

Message saved.

No new messages.

Tim pauses in the middle of the international arrivals gate at Heathrow, calculating options, flight paths, his meeting itineraries, and exactly how annoyed Bruce would be if he were to drop everything and leave Lucius to handle the shareholders without him.

But again, there's no risk or hassle or annoyance that wouldn't be worth it to be there for Kon.

Fucking obviously.

Decision made, Tim strides purposefully back toward the gate where the last few passengers are still disembarking the plane. He waits patiently for the airline attendant to finish assisting a family with a stuck stroller wheel.