#aroace bart

“Chess?” Bart suggests.

“Why would I want to play chess?" Danny asks.

“Because it’s better than homework.”

“I don’t actually know about that.”

Bart falls back into his bed. “Okay. Um… oh! What about those, you know, visual novel games? We could play it together too. I have a friend who likes them.”

Danny blinks at the suggestion. “Yeah, I guess. But aren’t a lot of those, like, dating things?”

With a fling of his arm, Bart rolls enough to look at Danny. “Yeah?”

“But you… I mean…” Danny clears his throat. “I didn’t think romance stuff interested you?”

“Oh,” Bart says, drawing the word out. “No, yeah, I’m aroace, but like, I think the game play will help it be more interesting. Plus playing with you. Do you, like, what genders do you like?”

Danny has to blink again. He liked Val, there had been no question of that. And he liked Sam maybe. Pauline was… like… doing what was expected. But guys… he didn’t like Tucker any less or differently than Sam. “I guess… I don’t care? I don’t think I care.”

“Okay, cool. Let’s find something to play! I’ll message, uh, my friend about them.”

“Bart, you can say it’s another hero, I know you work with other heroes,” Danny said.

Bart whines and flops back down onto his bed. “I know but like, what if I slip up and say their name? And then you know who you are! And I just outed someone. That totally wouldn’t be crash! I’m not used to being around someone all the time who isn’t in the community!”

Danny looks down at his hand and flexes it slowly. That wasn’t true, was it? He had been a hero too. Or a menace, at least. Like Spider-Man in all the movies: local menace but still a hero. But… he had never been part of the community.

He never had another hero.

“…Danny?” Bart was suddenly right beside Danny, sitting lightly on Danny’s bed. “Hey, you know that it’s okay that you’re no a hero, right? Like, Iris isn’t either, and we all love her. You don’t have to be a hero to be family.”

Danny flexes his hand. “…but I was.”

“What?”

“I was,” Danny says, a little louder than a whisper. “A hero. I was a hero, or something, back in—where I lived. Lots of people didn’t like me, but I was… I was like the people I fought. I don’t know if… maybe I wasn’t needed. Maybe it was all just testing. There’s no reason that…”

They just kept getting out, the ghosts. Was it always their doing? Or Vlad’s? Vlad… was he… Maybe his—they let them out sometimes. To hunt. To catch. To study. To cut apart piece by piece—

“Danny!”

Danny sucks in a sharp breath. The pain comes back to him with it and he doubles over, trying to curl around his hand. Arms and hands stop him, holding as he screams. It leaves him panting and trying to get away from it all, as if he could get away from his own body. It hurt it hurt it hurt.

“I know Danny, I know. You’re going to be okay, sweetheart, but you need to relax,” someone—Iris is saying.

He tries to listen. He’s only sure that he whines. The keening sound leaves him without his permission.

“I know, I know baby, but it will hurt less if you relax. I promise, sweetheart, I promise,” Iris says.

Her fingers card through his hair.

He breaths.

Smaller, shaking hands pull at his.

He lets them.

The pain eases.

He blinks. The world stumbles into place. Sound is spinning out again but vision is back. His hand his bloody. Blood on his hand in his nails on his bed on Bart—He breathes. Sound snaps back with a high pitched whine.

“That’s so good Danny, just keep relaxing, okay baby? Just breathe trough it.”

“Sorry,” he croaks.

“Don’t, just focus on relaxing, okay?” Bart pleads. He sounds ruined. Danny’s blood is on his hands.