Temporarily Gay Pt. 11
I'M ALIVE ONCE AGAIN. So, shit happened; I started classes and had to get on some assignments. More shit happened, but I wont say it here, prolly on ao3 cuz I gotta honor the AO3 Curse. but anyway. Enjoy!
Part 10 Masterlist Part 12
Extra Scene
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The next two days went like this. Monday began with a forced normalcy that was anything but. Wally was Danny’s shadow, a constant, cheerful presence that felt more like a leash than companionship. If Danny was in the kitchen, so was Wally. If Danny was working on an assignment in the living room, Wally sat right next to him, commenting on his work and chatting him up, not letting him concentrate. Danny couldn't even get up for a breather without Wally trailing him.
“Heading to the store? I’ll come with, need the walk,” Wally would say, already pulling on his jacket before Danny could respond.
“Just gonna read on the balcony,” Danny would mutter, trying to politely tell him to fuck off.
“Perfect! I’ve been meaning to catch up on some stuff,” Wally would reply, settling into the adjacent chair with a tablet, his presence a silent barrier between Danny and the door to the rest of the apartment.
Roy’s antagonism was a cold, constant drip. He never raised his voice, but his comments were like tiny, precise cuts, and all the time they would just come out of the blue.
“Interesting choice of shirt, Weston,” he’d remark offhandedly as Wes passed by.
“You chew pretty loud, you know that?” he’d comment during meals, making Wes freeze mid-bite, his ears turning red.
Garfield’s interventions were the most jarring because they were cloaked in humor. The moment Wes tried to engage Danny in a conversation about anything—the news, a movie, the weird weather—Garfield would materialize.
“Whoa, boring alert!” he’d sing, slinging an arm around Danny’s shoulders. “Danny, my man, you gotta see this video of a capybara taking a yoga class. It’s life-changing.” He’d physically steer Danny away, leaving Wes standing alone. Danny would turn back, pleading with his eyes for Wes to do something, but the tension was so thick that the words stuck in Wes's throat, leaving him to watch helplessly as Garfield kidnapped Danny.
Victor was a monument of silent observation. He’d stand in the doorway of a room, his large frame subdividing the space, making it impossible for Danny and Wes to be in the same area without feeling his analytical gaze. He was a human wall,always there, not talking, not tinkering, just observing. It was disturbing.
And Tim… Scratch that, Gar’s interruptions were bad. But Tim, he was the worse of them, he was the actual reason Danny was gonna go insane. He was making Danny's paranoia get worse and worse. He was always there, he could be on his laptop, but his eyes were never on the screen for long. Getting something in the kitchen, but analyzing each of his movements. Even reading a fucking book, and still reading more into Danny’s every twitch. His eyes were always flicking up, scanning, assessing. Danny would catch his gaze and feel a jolt of primal fear. It was the same feeling as being hunted. It was the feeling of Spectra’s influence, of being told he was worthless, of being observed by the Guys in White. It triggered every survival instinct he had.
By Tuesday Danny was a live wire. The fragile peace he’d forged with Wes had been replaced by a constant, buzzing anxiety. He was jumping at shadows, flinching at sudden movements. The other guy's behavior was weird and felt a whole lot like some kind of imprisonment.
Wes, meanwhile, was crumbling under the pressure. The resolve he’d found had been replaced by a cowed meekness. He spoke less, moved through the apartment like a ghost, and his eyes were permanently downcast. The guilt was eating him alive, and the Wally’s and his friends' behavior just made him feel like he deserved it.
This only frustrated Danny more. He saw the genuine remorse, but he missed the guy who’d bickered with him over the usefulness of watching the news over spaces documentaries, who would make fun of him for being a nerd but would then geek out about the history of photography and the importance of recognizing and understanding values, color theory and something to do with exposition to get the perfect midday picture without burning the background, whatever that meant. The meekness felt like a different kind of lie, a performance of penitence that was just as isolating as the hostility. He felt trapped between his own paranoia and Wes’s retreat.
Tuesday evening was one of the moments he actually got a minute to himself and away from the others.
The air in the apartment was thick enough to chew on, but Danny had finally managed to escape Wally’s suffocating presence by claiming he needed absolute silence to finish a planetary retrograde calculation for his upcoming planetarium show. It was a flimsy excuse, but the word "calculation" had made Wally’s eyes glaze over just enough for Danny to slip away onto the small balcony.
It wasn't working. He was gripping the cold metal railing, white-knuckled, staring at the lights of Amity Park without really seeing them. His breathing was uneven, but not quite hyperventilating. His fingers were starting to get that pins and needles sensation and he was weirdly aware of his teeth and felt like his hearing wasfucking blurry. What the fuck does that mean? He was so fucking overwhelmed. The hum of the city was a dull roar that almost, but not quite, drowned out the murmur of voices from inside. Every laugh from Garfield, every low rumble from Victor, felt like a personal assault. His skin was crawling with the phantom sensation of Tim’s analytical gaze and all his paranoia was coming back to kick him while he was down.
The sliding glass door slid open behind him. Danny flinched with his shoulders hiking up to his ears. He expected Wally’s bright, invasive cheer, Gar’s awkward attempt at getting him into a conversation with the others.
Instead, a cold, condensation-beaded can of soda appeared in his peripheral vision. He turned his head slightly, Wes was there, leaning against the railing a careful few feet away, not looking at him but out at the same cityscape. He held a second can for himself.
"Figured you could use this," Wes said, his voice low, almost lost in the ambient noise.
Danny stared at the can for a moment, confused, a bit weirded out by this. But Wes’s posture was relaxed, his offer simple, and that infuriating performance of meek guilt was absent, replaced by a weary straightforwardness.
After a beat, Danny took the can, the cold was a shock against his palm was an appreciated grounding sensation. "Thanks," he muttered, the word rough. He popped the top. The hiss was satisfyingly destructive of the silence.
They stood like that for a long moment, the only sounds the distant traffic and the faint fizz from their drinks. It was the first time in two days they’d been near each other without a Titan physically inserted between them somehow. The space felt vast and fragile.
"It's like they're waiting for one of us to spontaneously combust," Wes said finally, not turning his head.
A startled, dry huff of air escaped Danny’s nose. It wasn't quite a laugh, but it was the first non-panicked sound he’d made in hours. "Yeah. Or for me to reveal my secret identity as an alien plant," he deadpanned, taking a sip of the too-sweet soda.
The corner of Wes’s mouth twitched. "I was thinking more along the lines of you confessing to being the one who put the giant pickle weather vane on city hall."
This time, Danny did smile, just a tiny, weary thing. "I wish. That would be a way easier secret to keep."
Another silence, but this one was different. Lighter. The shared joke, however dark and niche, was a thread connecting them across the balcony.
Wes sighed, his own smile fading. "They'll get bored eventually," he said, his voice gaining a sliver of conviction. "They have to. This is... unsustainable."
Danny looked at him then, really looked. He saw the tired circles under Wes’s eyes, the same ones he knew were under his own. He saw the resolve trying to break through the guilt. For a second, he saw the guy who could banter about color theory and weird photography technicalities, not the ghost of the stalker he used to be. Pun intended.
"Hopefully," Danny replied, his voice quieter. He didn't believe it, not really, but the fact that Wes said it—that he was acknowledging the siege and offering a sliver of hope—meant something. It was an alliance, however tentative.
The moment shattered as the balcony door slid open with a forceful rush.
"Hey! What's the party out here?" Wally's voice was a blast of false cheer, too loud for the intimate space. He filled the doorway, grinning, but his eyes were sharp, scanning the distance between them, the sodas in their hands. "Getting some fresh air without me?"
Danny and Wes turned in unison. Their eyes met for a split second—a quick, silent exchange of resignation and understanding. Here we go again.
"Yeah," Danny said, his voice flat, the brief connection severed. "Just taking a break."
"Cool, cool. Don't want you to get a chill," Wally said, not moving from the doorway, an unspoken command to come back inside. The balcony was no longer a sanctuary; it had been reclaimed.
Wes pushed off the railing, his shoulders slumping back into their now-familiar defensive hunch. But as he passed Danny to go inside, his hand briefly brushed against Danny's arm. It wasn't an accident. It was a quick, solid press of fingers—a silent message: I meant what I said.
Then he was gone, and Danny was left alone with Wally, the fragile peace broken but the memory of it lingering like the faint, sweet taste of soda on his tongue. That tiny, deliberate touch felt more significant than any of their forced, watched conversations. It was a promise. And for the first time in days, Danny felt a flicker of something that wasn't pure dread.
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The breaking point came on that same Tuesday night. After coming back inside Wally doubled his overbearingness. Wes had to leave for a bit to deal with some stuff from work, leaving Danny at the mercy of all those guys' weird watchfulness. At least he had the decency of looking regretful of doing so.
The small calmness Wes company retrieved vanished quickly. Danny, desperate for a longer moment of silence away from Wally’s incessant presence, retreated to the closest bathroom, locking the door and sitting on the edge of the tub with his head in his hands, trying to breathe through the panic clawing at his throat.
After he cleared his mind a bit, he noticed he could hear a low murmur of voices in the living room, a constant, oppressive hum.
First he heard Roy’s voice, clear and cold. “—don’t know how you can even look at him, Wally. After what we saw.”
Then, a low mumble from Wally that Danny strained to hear.
“I know, but… he’s still my brother. I have to believe there’s a chance to fix this.” Wally’s voice was thick with pain.
“Fix what?” Danny whispered to himself, his heart hammering. What did they see? What do they know?
A new fear, cold and sharp, joined the paranoia. Did they know about Phantom? Was that what this was about? The pieces began to rearrange themselves in his terrified mind, forming a new, even more terrifying picture. This was not good, not at all.
He unlocked the bathroom door and stepped out. The conversation in the living room stopped abruptly. All eyes turned to him. Wally offered a strained smile. Roy looked away, his jaw tight, and Tim’s gaze was impassive, but Danny felt seen through to his core.
He couldn’t take it anymore.
So he left, making sure that Wally wouldn’t follow him, and didn't come back until it was dark and he felt like he could breathe normally again. Even if that meant that he had to deal with some minor ghost around town. Or that he didn't get dinner cuz he felt too nauseous. Or that his head was pounding and the lights were a bit too much for his eyes.
When he came back, he went directly to the room he was sharing with Wes—the one place the others couldn’t easily follow— and waited for him to turn in for the night.
It was awkward once again, them getting ready for bed, the little companionship they were starting to develop was nowhere to be found after all… Whatever this was. They didn't talk, not much anyway. If it weren't the others interrupting or getting in the way, it was Wes's guilty mood making it hard to just be together without making it awkward.That small chat at the balcony was the first real kind of conversation they had since Danny’s breakdown. But Danny had already had enough, so he finally broke the silence that had grown between them when Wes got under the covers, facing the wall.
“Wes,” Danny said, his voice rough.
Wes flinched, then slowly rolled over. “Yeah?”
“What’s going on with them?” Danny asked, his voice low and urgent. “They’re… they’re watching us. All the time. Especially Tim. It’s driving me crazy.”
Wes’s eyes widened slightly. He noticed how Danny was getting closed off again, but not how much it really was getting to Danny. Wally was always smiling and kept conversing with Danny all the time, and Gar always got Danny’s attention. But he forgot how overbearing an older brother could be. That Danny, for much of an extrovert he was, he wasn't as talkative. Or how Tim being so observant could…be a trigger.
But now, he could tell he hadn’t fully registered how Danny also acted way different. There was no more of the layback act. Not more light jokes and redirecting the conversation with ease. But… looking at him at this moment, he could kind of see it—the wild, cornered-animal look in Danny’s eyes. He was sitting on the bed looking at his hands on his lap, but he had that far away look, like his eyes were just on that position by default, but his mind wasn't working on processing anything his eyes catched. Something clenched in his chest, he didn’t want Danny feeling like that, not anymore, not in this room they were kinda making their own; Didn’t want it to be another stage for their lie, but an actual place where they could just wind down. It made a protective instinct, rusty from disuse, stir in him.
“I… I don’t know,” Wes admitted quietly. “But they’re making you uncomfortable. That’s not okay.” He took a shaky breath. “I’ll… I’ll talk to them tomorrow. Maybe if it comes from me, they’ll back off.”
It was a foolish, hopeful idea. But seeing Danny so genuinely scared overrode his own fear. He had caused this hyper-vigilance to develop; the least he could do was try to shield him from a new source of it.
Danny stared at him, surprised by the offer. For a second, he saw a flicker of the old Wes—the one who confronted things head-on, even if he was wrong. “Okay,” Danny said, a sliver of relief cutting through the panic. “Yeah. Okay.”
That relief was short-lived. The next morning the tension was thicker than ever. Danny left for his 3-to-7 pm shift at the planetarium with a knot in his stomach, feeling the weight of their stares on his back as he walked out the door. And even after he left, he swears he could still feel the little prick at his nape.
Wes watched as the door closed behind Danny. It wasn't dramatic at all, but it still felt damning. The others were dispersed around the apartment, but the air was tense, but he promised Danny that he was going to do something about it. So, fortified by a night of anxiety and a desperate need to do something right, he knew he had to act before he lost his nerve.
He found Roy and Wally in the living room. Both seemed to be working on something on his brother’s laptop, but they turned to look at him when he got close. They watched him… wearily. It made a knot twist in his gut. That look—especially from Wally—was a special kind of agony. His brother had been his North Star, the only constant in a childhood of empty rooms and absent parents. Even after moving away, Wally had been there, his voice through the phone a steady presence that remembered the little things, that asked about his day, that cared in a way no one else ever had. The only other constant thing in his life besides his brother was Danny, but now he could see how that had turned into something dark. But Wally had always been there for him, he was his real anchor.
Now, Wally was looking at him not with brotherly exasperation or even anger, but with a cold, wary distance, as if Wes were a threat to be managed, and this silent condemnation was worse than any shouting. It was his very ground crumbling. It made him want to confess, to spill everything and seek the comfort and guidance he’d always relied on; but he didn't want to see disappointment in his eyes… But, as of now, this may be worse.
“Hey,” Wes said, his voice sounding too loud in the quiet room.
Wally just kept watching him without moving. Roy just went back to what he was doing on Wally's Laptop.
“Look, I don’t know what’s going on,” Wes began, forcing his voice to stay even. “But you’re… the hovering, the staring… you’re making Danny uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. Maybe you should think about cutting your trip short? Or just like… Give him some space.”
The reaction was instantaneous. Roy slowly set down the laptop. He stood up, his movements deliberate and dangerous. He got right in Wes’s face, his expression a mask of cold fury.
“Uncomfortable?” Roy’s voice was a low, venomous whisper. “Yeah, I bet he is. Having to live with you.”
“W-what? what are you on about?” He was panicking quickly, he didn't know where all this aggression came from so suddenly and why it was escalating so fast. He just wanted to go cry in a corner and wait for Danny to come home.
Wally was there in a flash, his face a mess of hurt and anger, he couldn’t resist anymore. His brother was an abuser, a stalker, and he lied to him, telling him how wonderful the relationship he had with Danny was. He just couldn't keep it anymore.
“How could you, Wes?!” he choked out, the betrayal raw in his voice. “After all of this? We know. We know about the stalking. The pictures. The blog. All of it.”
Wes froze. The world tilted. They knew.
His deepest shame was laid bare. He looked at his brother’s heartbroken face, and his own guilt rose up like a flood, choking him. He couldn’t lie. He couldn’t explain. He could only stand there, exposed and condemned. “I… I can’t explain…” he whispered, a confession in his inability to defend himself. His throat was dry, his heart was racing and his hands were sweating. They know. They know.
“Really?. Fucking Really Wes?” Wally lost it “You stalk someone. Make a whole ass blog about them with all the pictures you took without their knowledge, much less their consent. And then. Then you go on and tell me he is your amazing boyfriend! “He throws his arms up and turns around, drawing his hands back on his hair and starts pacing without looking at him. “You had the gall to paint such a good picture of having someone awesome, of being happy with them, of how comprehensive he is and how much you love him” He stops and looks at him “and you don’t even try to defend yourself, of explaining or even apologysing for you fuck up?” His voice is cold, but his eyes… They aren't even full of fury, they look void. Sharp. “I raised you better than this.”
Then, the front door opened.
Danny walked in, shoulders slumped with the exhaustion of a long shift, but the moment he looked at the living room and saw them made him stop. Wes was pale, he looked like he was about to cry and grabbing his arm so hard he could almost see it bruising already. Wally was in front of him looking imposing and squared up, looking down on his own brother. And Roy wasn't any better, he looked outright murderous. He needed to stop whatever was going on.
“Hey, what’s going—?”
He didn’t get to end his sentence. Roy had moved with such a startling speed, grabbing Danny by the arm and pulling him roughly behind him and Victor, that he didn't even notice when the others appeared and moved, putting themselves between him and Wes.
“It’s okay, Danny,” Roy said, his voice tight. “We’ve got this. You don’t have to be scared of him anymore.”
Danny stared, utterly bewildered. “Scared of who? What are you talking about?”
“It’s over, Wes,” Wally said, his voice cracking as he turned his back on his brother to focus on Danny, putting a comforting, yet smothering, hand on his arm. “You’re safe now. We know everything.”
“Wait, what—?” Danny tried to speak, to understand.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to protect him,” Wally soothed, talking over him. “We saw the blog. The pictures. We know what he did to you.”
Danny tried to talk, to ask what was going on, or to try and explain this was some kind of misunderstanding. But every time Danny tried to get a word in, to ask a question, he was met with another layer of placating, patronizing assurance. Their narrative was already written. He was the victim, Wes was the monster, and they were the heroes. His confusion began to curdle into something hot and sharp in his chest.
They thought he was scared? They thought they were protecting him? From Wes?
They were doing the exact thing that had made his life a living hell for years: deciding his story for him, acting without his consent, treating him like a thing to be managed instead of a person to be heard.
The heat in his chest exploded.
“SHUT UP!”
The command tore from his throat, raw and powerful. It tore through everyone’s tries at reassurance and verbal attacks at Wes. It got to silence them.
Absolute, stunned silence.
Danny stepped out from behind Roy, shrugging off Wally’s hand. His eyes, blazing with a fury that was entirely human and entirely his own, locked onto Tim.
“You,” he seethed, jabbing a finger at him. “You followed me to the Mall, didn't you?” He smeared “I knew I was being follies. I knew I felt someone watching me, following me. It was you!” He yelled at Tim’s face, getting close enough to jab a finger at his chest.
He kept going, he was tired of people forcing him into corners, of them getting a say in his life and taking his choses and doing whatever they wanted. “You didn't just follow me, you went and decided to eavesdrop on a very personal conversation about a real fear I was having. One you were making worse may I add! and just heard enough to get the worst possible idea, didn’t you? You heard me talk about being followed and stalked and scared, and you just stopped listening! You didn't hear the part where I said I was starting to feel safe! You didn't hear the part where I said I was starting to trust him! You took a piece of my pain and you built your own story around it!”
He whirled on the entire group, his voice shaking with rage. “Who gave you the right? Who said you could barge in here and decide what’s best for me? You think you’re heroes? This isn’t helping! This is just a different kind of prison!” He threw his arms to the sides.
He was gasping for air, his vision was getting spotted. A panic attack was coming, this one forged in the fires of his righteous anger and indignation. They thought they had the right to barge in his life. Them, who just met him less than a week ago, who didn't care how this affected him, just how they felt about it.
He felt a hand on his arm, not grabbing, not restraining, but grounding.
“Danny,” Wes said, his voice surprisingly calm amidst the storm. He wasn’t trying to shut him up. It was just there “Breathe. Just… look at me. In and out.” He said, exaggerating his movements and tapping slightly his arm with his finger.
That simple, direct instruction cut through the building panic that was making his head dizzy. So Danny focused on Wes’s face, on the concern there was for him, not caring for the others. He dragged in a ragged breath, then another, and another.
Slowly, his breathing evened and the spots in his vision cleared. The fight drained out of Danny as suddenly as it had arrived. The anger left him hollow, exhausted. His whole body felt like lead and he was shaky on his legs. He shook off Wes’s hand carefully, the gesture clearly non hostile. He was just… spent, tired. Without a word he walked past them and collapsed onto the couch, burying his face in his hands.
The sight—the supposed abuser calmly guiding his victim through a panic attack and then, said “victim” just ignoring them and dismissing them—was so dissonant it finally short-circuited their assumptions. They just stood there and stared, utterly lost.
A moment of awkward silence followed. Then, moving slowly, Wes walked over and sat on the same couch, giving Danny space but offering a silent, defiant presence. He picked one of Danny’s hands, and started playing with his fingers, talking in a low voice about his visit to his boss. Just small talk to help him get distracted and clear his head.
As Wes sat there helping Danny through his crash out, the Titans stood frozen in the center of the room, their mission was in ruins, their certainty shattered. They were faced with the devastating realization that their rescue had felt, to the person they wanted to save, exactly like an attack. _____________________________________________
This one is even longer than the others, kinda wanted to get everything in one chapt so we can decompress a bit in the next one and have some actual character development.
