#timkyle

jason and kon are both close with tim

kon and jason are both close with kyle

kyle and tim barely know each other

Kyle: No I do not!

Kyle: For jewels, for furs, for mixed securities, like a gentleman!

Kyle is both the older man and the sugar baby. Anyone in the superhero community needs to only hear one word of their romantic involvement to immediately deduce that there is no way in hell Kyle could possibly be taking advantage of Tim in that arrangement. Literally everyone would immediately come to the conclusion that Tim is the one taking advantage of Kyle’s incredible body and dimwitted nature. But that’s because they know Kyle and the severe limitations to his mental capacity, and they know Tim and his alarming likelihood of becoming a supervillain in the future.

I would like to emphasize that other heroes would be so not threatened by Kyle’s intentions towards Tim that the Batfam would give Tim a shovel talk. And he would hold nothing against them for this, telling them that he understands their concerns but he is fully invested in just being happy with Kyle.

The general public, however, doesn’t know about any of this. They see Timothy Drake, freshly 18, short for his age, a boy who would have only a couple months ago graduated from high school if he hadn’t dropped out. He looks cute and charming uwu in his widdle tuxedo as he enters the gala. And they see next to him a gleaming hunk of a man who can’t walk five feet without staring at someone’s ass, who replies he’s 34 when prompted by reporters. He doesn’t look 34, but he certainly doesn’t look like he should be anywhere near baby-faced Timothy. And his name is Kyle. And what does he do? He’s a painter. And he thinks nothing of freely admitting that Tim paid for his tux because he couldn’t afford one.

It really only takes that much information for the media to go into a seething frenzy about cradle robbing and predation.

And the entire superhero community reads the papers and watches the news with their jaws dropped, their coffee forgotten. Kyle? Predator? The public perception is so far from their lived experience that it completely side-swipes them. Especially since this is the first time Kyle’s ever shown up in the news, and he’s never had any sort of disjointed reputation before.

Only four heroes aren’t shocked.

Bruce isn’t shocked, obviously, but the sheer concept of Kyle being able to pull something like that off with someone like Tim is so irritating that he accidentally rips his newspaper in half the moment he reads this crap. How dumb do you have to be to not see the lights aren’t all on up upstairs in that pretty head of his? He’s got half a mind to go punch Kyle just to assure himself that he hasn’t lost his mind and Kyle is still too stupid to live. Tommy Monaghan (yes, he’s alive, shut up) isn’t shocked. He takes one look at the news report on the TV over the bar and just laughs himself sick. Because of course the only people dumber than Kyle would be the reporters and news anchors covering him. He laughs until he gets a migraine and throws up. And then he keeps chuckling. Tim isn’t shocked. He had gone to great lengths to drill it into Kyle’s head that he wasn’t allowed to reveal his last name to the media, specifically to make Kyle’s life easier. Not that it would matter too much. Tim’s been paying for Kyle’s apartment, utilities, insurance, and grocieries for almost a year now - if Kyle suddenly couldn’t find work, Tim had him covered. He’d keep Kyle covered even if they broke up.