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One way or the other, Bruce will find out about his babies. The question is just when and how much he will find out. It's something that Tim actively avoids thinking about. Which is bad; he's smarter than this, and he knows that the more time goes by, the more opportunities there are to screw him over without him noticing.
But what he is thinking about is the world-changing play happening in front of him.
Bart sits on the rug, poking a squealing Kekoa's cheeks as he coos, "Say Daddy, mini-me, Daaaaaddy."
On the other side, Kon lays on his back and holds a silently smiling Cirano above his head. "Pa! Just like me, small bean, Pa! And then do it twice to make Papa!"
This madness that makes his brain go mushy. Tim knows that he is far from his best, but this scene looks right wrong. From what he put together, it's clear that they're experiencing some type of delayed group euphoria about the babies now that the high tensions have started to settle. It's been a while since they have removed the babies from their natal chamber, and somehow their subconscious has collectively decided that they're stable enough to fall into the baby craze.
From an evolutionary standpoint, it would make sense if the whole colony was feeling giddy at the acceptance of someone new in their group. It would make sure that everyone bonds with the newcomer in a short amount of time and would have the colony try to integrate the new person into the social structure as efficiently and smoothly as possible.
From what he has gathered from the space clinic, the colony as a whole should have fallen into this state one after the other as they finished their "tasks" on the first day of meeting them. But since they were too stressed, they were in full damage control mode, and despite winding down, their bodies still released too much cortisol to relax.
Tim feels his gut turn with guilt. Even without knowing, he has somehow managed to make things worse. Now that they somewhat know what's going on and can anticipate what happens going forward, their genders decided that it's finally time to celebrate.
Watching Kon and Bart shamelessly compete on what their baby's first word will be is surreal. And it makes him want one in his arms too. Shouldn't Tim - the Queen and leader - get baby privileges?
"Don't be ridiculous, boys," Cassie chimes in as she comes back with a freshly changed Wendy. "Everyone knows that babies always say mama first." The Amazon is almost glowing with how hard she's smiling.
Bart scrunches his nose. "No, they don't."
Abruptly, Tim is painfully aware of how honest the speedster is. And that he just said that to his babymother. ...Except that the child is biologically made with Tim, so maybe he is the babymother.
His mind blanks. Should he be the one called mama? No, that's stupid. It's perfectly normal for both parents of a baby to be a father figure. No-one accuses Lex of being a mother. Right? Right.
Kon loudly announces, "I'm going to be a stay-at-home dad." All thoughts forgotten, Tim's head whips over to the half-kryptonian incredulously.
"Wait, what?" Someone says, and he agrees. What? But Kon shrugs from his place on the floor and carefully lays Cirano down on his chest while flexing his biceps. It's evil that this man is born to be so effortlessly attractive. Wait, no, bad thoughts.
"I've been thinking," Kon explains, "We can't stay holed up for much longer before we need to get back to our jobs and whatever else." Tim wants to protest, but apparently he isn't allowed to pay for all of the expenses for the rest of their lives.
"But I don't have a job, or college, or a life really outside of the farm," the half-kryptonian goes on like he didn't just say something heart-wrenching. "So I can just hang back and take care of them through the whole day. Maybe hand them off whenever one of you is free. It's the easiest solution."
Looking straight at him, Cassie protests, “You don't need to give up your freedom to be stuck at home all day. We can always adjust our schedules to find time with them or get a League-approved babysitter in case a villain barges in.”
Kon laughs out loud and grins at her. "I'm the invulnerable one of the team, and I have TTK that can be spread to protect others too. I think I can handle the househusband life."
The comment makes Tim take a mental note to push forward their timeline to search for immortality. He pointedly doesn't acknowledge the word husband, because since when are they married? Yes, their colony bonds formed because they saw each other as life partners, and then those bonds went on steroids because of the - now banned - Green Lantern alien juice, but that isn't supposed to mean marriage! It just means that his friends care about him a whole lot more than he realized. Not to mention, Tim is pretty sure that he hasn't lost enough time to forget that he might have accidentally proposed. Or is this just something that is expected of him? Are they waiting for him to propose? To Kon? To everyone? Even with Bart and Cassie dating? Does he need to get foreign citizenship in a polygamous country to uphold everyone's virtue? What the fuc- Tim isn't thinking about it.
Until now, he thought that Kon's lack of civilian life outside of the Kent's was on purpose after the whiplash of death being away for so long. But the way that the half-kryptonian phrased it... Logically speaking, Kon does happen to be the only one perfectly suited for this. Cassie is in college, Bart interns at Star Labs, and Tim has both Drake Industries and Wayne Enterprises to look after. No, he isn't salty, he's happy that one of them is available.
"Think that's possible, my Queen?" Kon asks with the widest and stupidly happy grin.
After a few moments, the smile falls into an exasperated look. "You didn't listen to a word we said." It's not a question.
Face heating up, Tim realizes his mistake and then kicks into his gala training, "Forgive me, could you repeat that?"
Kon rolls his eyes while Cassie walks over and hands out a pouting Wendy. Taking her without a second thought, he cuddles her closer until she is basically mushed against him.
The Amazon shakes her head. "We asked if it's realistic to all move in together and have Kon be the caretaker while we are working and then switch when someone else is back. Kind of like taking stay-at-home shifts but with Kon as the main caretaker."
Frowning, Tim thinks it through as he says, "It's probably the safest way to go about it. With Kon covering most of the time, the rest of us can manage our outside obligations. We'd probably need to organize a schedule so that we know who's available to take over at any given point."
Looking up, he's met with three matching smiles, and he loses any ongoing train of thought. "Uhm.."
Cassie takes pity on him and agrees, "Sounds like a plan, Tim."
Heart beating wildly in his chest, Tim wordlessly nods in agreement as the three go back to debating what a schedule would even look like. In the privacy of his mind, he thinks that he's going to burst from all the attention he's been getting.
×××××
Like on a mission, Tim unlocks the door with Kekoa strapped to his front and strides back inside the Nest. At the unusual silence, he slows down his steps. Behind him, Cassie yells, "Is anyone home?"
He calls back, "No, they're still out!"
Her resulting groan has him wince in sympathy. They've had a few days to wind down from the giddy high that they've been riding, and finally started to get those things done that they've been putting off. Like destroying all evidence of a secret cloning lab. Or getting the paperwork to register the newborns into.
Tim is lucky enough to have a private lawyer that works magic at keeping this stuff on the down low. Hopefully this will stay low-key enough that his family won't notice for a little longer.
Walking back to the door, Cassie looks decidedly unhappy as she holds the stroller of crying babies. Those two have been unhappy for the last ten minutes, and nothing has been enough to make them calm down. They've decided to follow the advice of letting them tire themselves out, but it's still a cacophony to the ears. He can visibly see when Cassie gives up all pretenses and picks up the entire stroller to carry inside.
"I hope you know," she says bluntly, "that just because I love them now, I'd have never agreed to three tiny beasts on the first try."
"Duly noted," he replies just as bluntly. Though he wants to protest, Tim has to agree that raising three infants at once is a challenge.
With a sigh, the Amazon closes the door and crouches down to take the crying ones out. She barely manages to pick up Cirano when the boy grabs her hair and pulls while screaming.
"Damnit," she curses.
With a wince, Tim steps closer to help her get free from that tyranny. If she was fully human, all the pulling would have hurt.
"I swear this is the fourth time that this happened," Cassie mutters. "Am I cursed or something?"
"Babies just have strong grabbing reflexes. It's a survival mechanism," he reflexively corrects as he manages to fully pull Cirano away from her. It's a bit awkward with the baby strapped to him, but he can manage.
As if pulled by a string, the two of them walk straight into his their room and lay down onto the bed. His queen-size is a savior that he didn't know he would need. With all of the two others crying, Kekoa has started to hiccup too.
Lying on his back with three shrieking machines between them, Tim wonders how he got here. He knows the answer, but it's a purgatory of his own making. Whoever said that babies are angels has never raised one.
Cassie asks, "Do you think I should cut my hair?"
Glancing over, he sees her fiddling with a hair strand. Now, Tim's track record says that he may not be good at relationships with girls, but if there's one thing that he learned, is that if a girl asks his opinion on herself, she just wants validation. No-one will ever know the amount of social media research he had to put into finding this one out.
"Sure, go for it," he tells her. Cassie still looks into the distance, but there is a quiet satisfaction to her. Thank goodness that was the right answer. Together they lay in peace and enjoy the lazy headspace when the babies finally tire themselves out.
Distantly , Tim hears the front door unlock but doesn't bother to move from his comfortable position. A muffled voice announces, "We're back."
Cassie makes a halfhearted hum that Kon can hear but doesn't move from her curled-up position either. From one blink to the next, Bart is standing in front of the bed. They don't do anything, but the speedster apparently gets the message because he speeds out of view and can be vaguely heard talking to Kon.
Tim goes back to dozing as the two others can be heard walking through the apartment. It's strange how the sounds keeping him awake are more comfortable than the silence that greeted him when he walked in.
A few minutes later, the sound of the shower turning on can be heard. From the noise of water pressure being used at full blast, it's Bart trying to speed through the cleaning process.
Tim snorts a huff. The speedster probably forgot that he could just phase the dirt off of himself. It's always funny to him how powerful the speedster is, but then he forgets that he has much more control over himself than when they were younger. Younger and full of themselves to the point of thinking that they were invincible.
The shower turns off. Just as fast, the talking in the hallway takes off again. Tim absentmindedly wonders if they went shopping after their stint at the lab.
Arcadia and Kloka. Gatherer and Worker. Acquiring resources and managing them. Bart and Kon. Their bickerings have started to wind down since they discovered their secondary gender. Kon has started writing lists of what they need, and Bart has made sure to keep those constantly stocked at full capacity while also keeping the emergency rations ready.
They've all been doing their best to adjust to their new lives, and it almost feels suspicious how easy it has been. It has been a mix of research and everyone talking and debating on how to fit together, which has somehow led to them working in ways that they haven't before.
Cassie has been very calm for the most part, which is an interesting development when considering that the Ivanhoe holds the role of Guard. But with no danger in sight, it seems that she's just helping out where she's needed and stepping back when someone else can handle the situation. In a way, he wonders if it's any different from how she was before. That goes for all of them. Are they truly different people with these new genders?
All of them knew that they changed somewhat - now they know why - but there was never a true gap as to who they were before. Except for himself gradually getting colder and lonelier as he thought that everyone was leaving him... Considering that cloning was already a stress response before he became a Queen, maybe that's just him. His morals have always been a bit skewed.
A brush of wind tickles through the room, so there is no surprise when, glancing beside him, Bart is curled around Cassie's back. The speedster beams a smile at him. Tim is too tired to fight the warmth that spreads through his chest and returns it.
He doesn't startle when a hand clutches his as Cassie blinks her eyes open before pushing herself back into Bart. The soft atmosphere of comfort blankets them again.
In the quiet, it's easy to hear the sound of the shower working through the hallway. It drizzles in the background like a soft rain.
He must have fallen asleep, because when he opens his eyes again, Kon is walking through the room in a towel. The half-kryptonian notices him watching, then he glances back and shoots him a smile before going back to search for his clothes. Tim mildly watches him move around, going through the dresser like he's always used it. That might not even be an exaggeration.
An unexpected squeeze of his hand has him look beside him where Cassie keeps glancing at Kon, then away. He honestly doesn't know what she's trying to do. Bart himself is out like a light.
Tim must have zoned out again, because the bed suddenly dips beside him before a pair of arms draw him into a hug. Kon. A pleased hum escapes him while he burrows closer into the hold.
Sighing, he lets go of his grip on the waking world.
×××××
BREAKING NEWS! TIM DRAKE: BABY DADDY?
OFF THE MARKET - TIMOTHY DRAKE FOUND WITH WONDER GIRL!
YOUNGEST BILLIONAIRE HAS A SECRET FAMILY? MORE LIKELY THAN YOU THINK!
Tim hates everything and everyone. Maybe he should be grateful that his luck managed to hold on for two months, but it has finally run out. The press is all over the pictures of him and Cassie walking around with the triplets.
This throws a massive wrench into about half of his plans that dealt with the premise that one of the Bats would find out first. The Nest is in lockdown, and all of the tech that could record sounds are firmly put away for when Oracle inevitably starts to meddle. Which means that this is probably the only time where he can debrief his team on the plan. "We need to publicly fake date as a polycule."
The whole breakfast table turns to him unimpressed.
"And this helps us how exactly?" Kon questions while burping a fussy Kekoa.
Damnit, this is why he usually uses PowerPoints to get his ideas across, but he didn't have the time to make one.
Rocking a sleepy Cirano, Tim explains, "Since we've decided that Cassie will be the official mother of all three with different fathers, thank you Cassie, it means that we were all involved in their creation. If we don't want this to turn into a smear campaign against Wonder Girl, then we need to be officially committed to each other in the long run. We can say that we've been together for two years and then had a slip-up that no-one noticed because she's an Amazon."
Cassie snorts. "I'm pretty sure that other Amazons know better than that."
"Maybe, but almost the entire population lives on Themyscira, which has no access to social media, and the remaining ones have - to my knowledge - no interest in reproduction themselves and thus no reason to know or get involved."
"Except Diana."
"Diana wouldn't rat us out to the press."
"Fair."
"And what about our families?" Kon asks. "I really don't think that they're going to believe that that's what happened without questions."
Tim takes a deep breath. "We say that we cloned them as a group decision." Nausea hits him like a train, but he doesn't let it show. What he's saying is basically to hide all evidence of his breakdown and brush away the blame. "With Young Justice being known to be extremely close, we can spin it into romantic closeness that we just never bothered to share. We can say that Bart and Cassie wanted to go public, so they did so as an individual couple but were still part of our polycule. Along with our... history, it wouldn't be unbelievable that there were feelings involved all along."
As in, secret missions since their team's founding, Red Robin going AWOL after half of them died, the lack of boundaries between them, or even that all of them have been involved physically and sometimes romantically. It's almost painful how plausible their cover would hold.
"Batman isn't going to believe that we decided to be parents out of the blue," Cassie points out.
While that would be the ideal scenario, it's very possible that she's right.
"Then we will hold our public legal claim to the children over him," he states.
Because if he gives the signal, as soon as his lawyer lets go of the tight lock that they kept the babies' information under, the world will know of Wendy, Cirano, and Kekoa Drake-Sandsmark. Even if Bruce tries to contest Tim's sanity, Kon and Bart hold parental rights, along with Cassie holding the strongest claim as the "mother".
"Question," Bart chimes in with concern. "Isn't there the teensy-tiny problem that we all have our secret identities known to the public? As in, everyone except you?"
It's an elephant that will need to be addressed carefully, but also, "Tim Drake and Red Robin have been seen together a few times. It wouldn't be impossible to think that the heir to a multibillion-dollar corporation that is suspected to supply Batman would need witness protection, where I would have met heroes my age. Considering that two of you are mostly retired and Cassie leads a new team, it wouldn't be impossible for you three to settle down with a civilian 'in the know'."
An awkward silence settles over the room until Kon sighs. "Sure, we've done more insane stuff than this."
Bart hums with a hungry Wendy in his arms sucking the life out of her bottle and agrees, "If Rob says it's fine, it's probs gonna be fine."
Turning to the most important player in this plan, Tim can't help the nerves as he looks at Cassie. The Amazon looks at her breakfast like it plans a career in villainy.
She looks at him with a frown. "The only reason I'm agreeing with you is because it makes sense from an outsider's perspective."
Relief floods through his body with the full agreement. This plan was one of the only ones he came up with that didn't involve moving out of the US, living with Lex Luthor, or a political movement against the hero community.
"That's grea-" Loud beeping of the security systems interrupts him before going quiet.
Everyone is ready to jump into action when Kon straightens and whispers, "Oh fuck."
All of them sit in horror as they listen to the door getting torn open, before a set of too quiet steps march towards them. Looming like a shadow come to life, Batman walks into the room followed by a flying Superman.
Tim cuts the tension with a straight, "You're paying for that door." He's not going to cower before these freaking show-offs who just broke into his home.
Batman's eyes snap to him in silent warning, but then drift down to the baby in his arms. Lips pursed with emotional constipation, he demands, "You have some explaining to do."
"No, we don't," Kon interrupts.
Superman looks pained in his oh-so-powerful authority. "Son, this-"
"Nope," the half-kryptonian cuts off, "Even if we're family, I'm not obligated to tell you anything. That includes when I decide to spawn babies."
The two of them are locked in a staring contest that consists of Superman doing kicked puppy eyes and Kon glaring back.
Batman ignores them, saying, "We want an explanation."
Tim grimaces, "I don't-"
"Tim."
He winces and has to look away. Because those words are all Bruce with his awkward attempts at feelings and overwhelming worry for his children. He can shut down Batman any day of the week, but Bruce is a different matter.
"I was going to tell you," Tim mutters under his breath. And he was! Just, maybe a few months to a few years from now. Mostly depending on when he couldn't hide his babies anymore, but still. It wasn't going to be forever.
The silence in the room is only accentuated by the noise of Wendy's aggressive sucking.
"Would. You," Bruce's words are so stiff and awkward that he interrupts himself. Trying again, the man goes, "Would you come to Saturday's family dinner? All of you."
Tim wants to say no, absolutely not; he's not dealing with an entire Batclan poking their noses into his business. But the reality is that at some point they will need to deal with it. They don't live in a bubble, they are part of a very large circle of families, coworkers, and friends that overlap and worry when they don't know what is going on.
"We'll talk about it and tell Alfred our decision," he quietly concedes. It's not a decision that he can make on his own.
"That's good." Bruce doesn't seem to know how to go on from here.
Deciding that it's over, Batman turns around with his cape flaring behind him as he makes his exit. Superman glances between them in concern before he finally scrunches his face as if in pain and trails quietly behind the other.
The room is silent.
"You know that we're totally gonna have to go," Bart comments now that he's not in danger of being maimed by overprotective parents.
Tim closes his eyes. "I know."