Temporarily Gay Pt 16
Believe it or not, I wrote this chapter listening to Gaitas, specifically this one, dunno why, but it felt fitting at the moment.
Part 15 Masterlist Part 17
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The silence in the living room was thick with exhaustion. The crinkle of chip bags and the unscrewing of water bottle caps were the only sounds, a mundane symphony in the wake of catastrophe. Roy’s command to eat had been obeyed not out of hunger, but out of a primal need for direction.
Wes nibbled on the granola bar, the taste like sawdust in his mouth. His gaze was fixed on the closed bedroom door, his entire being tuned to the silent space where Danny and Sam were. Every few seconds, he’d glance down at his hands, now clean and his shirt no longer the bloodied one he had earlier, but his brother’s soft grey T-shirt.
Wally watched him from his spot on the floor, his own guilt a leaden weight. He wanted to bridge the chasm between them, to say the words that clawed at his throat, but the moment felt too fragile, too sacred. Any sound louder than a breath might shatter the precarious peace, so he stayed silent.
It was Garfield the one to speak, his voice soft, gentle. "He's tough. I've seen a lot of people take hits, but the way he was fighting that... that burn... he's stubborn." He offered a weak smile to Wes. "Stubborn is good. It means he wants to stay."
Wes gave a jerky nod, unable to speak around the lump in his throat. Stubborn felt like too small a word for the force of will it had taken for Danny to crawl up those stairs, to give them instructions while his body was being torn apart.
The bedroom door clicked open, and Sam emerged, closing it softly behind her. Every head turned toward her. She looked tired, the fierce energy that had propelled her into the apartment banked into a watchful ember.
"He's stable," she announced, her voice low but clear, a balm to the room's frantic anxiety. "His breathing is even, and his color's a little better. He’s just… sleeping. Really sleeping."
A collective, shuddering sigh of relief passed through the room. Victor’s shoulders, which had been held at a tense, ready angle, slumped minutely. Roy let out a heavy breath and finally took a seat on the couch by Tim’s side, who closed his eyes, the rigid line of his posture finally relaxing as he leaned his head back against the cushions. Wally slumped forward where he sat on the floor, his forehead nearly touching his knees, while Garfield released a long, soft sigh, the sound filled with the weight of the night.
Sam’s eyes scanned the room, landing on Wes. "He's out for the count. You should get some actual rest. You look like death warmed over."
Wes was about to refute, but Sam's look—a flat, unwavering stare that promised no room for argument—stopped him. He let out a long, defeated sigh, his shoulders slumping as the last of his resistance bled away. He turned his tired gaze from her to the others in the living room.
“Are you gonna stay for the night?” Wes questioned, his voice hollow.
Wally flinched at the directness, his own guilt reflected in the hesitant hope in his eyes. “You… Ok with that?”
A humorless, breathy sound escaped Wes’s lips. He ran a hand through his already disheveled hair, his fingers trembling slightly. “To be honest? I don’t give a fuck, Wally.” It didn't sound angry, just bone-deep tired, scraped raw. “After all the bullshit I’ve been through just this week…” He gestured vaguely, encompassing everything from the fake dating to the explosion, “…I don't have anymore fucks to give.” He stated it simply, a fact as plain as the exhaustion etched on his face. All he wanted was to be back in that room, to see the steady rise and fall of Danny’s chest for himself. He stood up.
Wally winced, standing and taking a half-step forward, he just couldn’t wait another second “Wes, look, I’m so—”
“Stop it.” Wes’s voice was quiet but firm, cutting through the apology before it could form. He finally lifted his head, meeting his brother’s gaze directly, and Wally was struck by the profound hurt in his eyes. “I know why you did it. I know I was awful. I know what I did is bad.” He closed his hands into fist to still their shaking, his knuckles white. “But I just wanted to spend a week or two with my brother, who I haven't seen in person since I was twelve. I wanted to just… have a good time with what I have left of my family.” His voice cracked on the last word,’ and he had to pause, swallowing hard. “Because it seems I don't even have that anymore.”
He took a shaky breath, pressing on. “Danny is… he’s wonderful. He doesn't take shit from anyone, but he’s patient and kind enough to walk you through your bullshit and let you make amends. To let you try to be better. And that's what I’m doing.” A tear finally escaped, tracing a clean path through the lingering grime on his cheek. He wiped it away with a rough, impatient swipe of his hand. “You think I don't feel awful for what I did? You think I wouldn't want to tear my own skin off sometimes? To curl up and cry in a corner? I understand that to an outsider, it looks unforgivable. It was. But you…” His voice broke again, thick with emotion. “You aren't a stranger, you are my brother. And you wouldn't even talk to me. You just kept looking at me like I was a stranger, kept avoiding me. I just wanted my brother, but all I got was hostility in my own home.”
He took a final, shuddering breath, looking away from Wally’s devastated face. “I do understand why. But it still hurts.” His voice was a whisper now, all fight gone. “This past week was awful. I’m tired. And the first day Danny and I finally got a break… this happened.” He gestured weakly towards the bedroom. “So no. I don't care if you stay or go back to wherever you spent last night. I’m going to sleep.”
Without another look, he turned and walked to the bedroom, closing the door softly behind him. Sam watched them for a moment longer, her expression a glacier of disapproval, before she turned and followed Wes into the bedroom.
The living room was left in a silence heavier than before, the click of the latch resonating like a gunshot.
A broken, choked sound escaped Wally. The ground was no longer there, just a void that was sucking him down, unbalancing him, crumbling him. He swayed on his feet and his knees gave out. He didn't slump onto the couch; he folded, collapsing back onto the floor, his face burying in his hands as his shoulders shook with silent, ragged sobs.
The other Titans were paralyzed, forced to watch the direct consequences of their actions once again
Roy felt like he was protecting his friend from the reality of his brother being a monster, that him being harsh was a deserved punishment for Wes actions, like it was his right to do so. But he was wrong. They all were wrong,
Now, he saw that what he’d done was help Wally drive a knife into his own brother’s heart. His hands, usually curled into ready fists, hung limp at his sides. "Wally..." he started, his voice rough, but the name was just a helpless exhale. There was no comfort to offer. He had helped destroy this.
Tim was utterly still, pale as a ghost, his wide eyes fixed on Wally's shuddering form. The brilliant, logical framework he’d constructed—the stalker, the victim, the necessary intervention—lay in ruins, and the rubble was a broken family. This wasn't a mission failure; it was a personal, human catastrophe he had engineered. He had been so focused on the puzzle of Danny and Wes that he’d treated Wally’s brother as an abstract variable, not a person. The shame was a hot, nauseating wave. He had been so clever, so sure. And in his arrogance, he fucked up badly. He didn't just blindly accuse Wes and become another bad experience to him and Danny, he was the reason one of his best friends was now crying and sobbing inconsolably on the floor. The nausea flared up his throat again, but he swallowed back down. Wally needed him right now, but he didn't know what to do. For the second time that day, he didn't know what to do, how to help, how to fix this mess. This wasn't something he could investigate, something he could just solve on his own and call it a day. So he just stood there, untethered, watching his friend crumble in front of him powerless.
No one spoke. There were no more strategies, no plans. The silence in the living room was filled only with the sound of Wally's grief and the deafening weight of what they had done.
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Inside, the air was still and cool. The only movement was the soft, steady rhythm of Danny's breathing from the bed. Wes was standing by the bed, watching him, with his arms locked around his own torso straining to keep the pieces of himself from coming apart.
Sam closed the door and leaned against it, the wood a solid presence at her back. She watched the tense line of Wes's shoulders for a long moment before she spoke, her voice low but clear in the stillness. "What was all that about?"
Wes didn't turn around. In a flat, exhausted monotone, he explained, the words spilling out as if he was too tired to even filter them.
"They've been watching us since they got here. Not like, casual watching. Watching watching. Tim followed Danny to the mall—Danny knew. He felt it, then watching all the time it freaked him out so bad he had a panic attack. That's actually why he asked you to meet that day." He let out a shaky breath. "And they weren't just watching him. They were watching me too, and kept trying to stand between us. All the time” He shuddered “Victor would just... stand there, in doorways, blocking the room. Roy would make these little comments, under his breath, just to get under my skin. And Gar... he'd swoop in the second I tried to talk to Danny, drag him away for some stupid reason."
He finally turned to face her, his eyes haunted. "And then they did their own... investigation, I guess. And they're some kind of IT consultants. They dug up my old blog, and found the pictures, the posts... all of it. The stuff I deleted years ago. They pulled it out of the digital grave and held it up like a smoking gun." He ends up spatting, some of his lost energy coming back with indignation.
He wrapped his arms around himself again, a self-soothing gesture that did little to calm the tremor in his hands. "They decided I was a monster. A stalker. And they decided Danny was my victim. So they drew a line right through this apartment. They'd put themselves between us, physically. Wally wouldn't let me near him, always touching Danny, talking over me, handing me things like an afterthought. It was a... it was horrible. They made me feel like a stranger in my own home."
His voice dropped to a broken whisper. "And then they confronted me. Wally and Roy. They laid it all out. They called me a stalker. Wally said... “His gaze unfocused, and he swallowed hard. "He said something hurtful." A fresh tear traced a path down his cheek and he turned away from Sam uncomfortable "He looked at me like I was nothing. Like I was a disease. And then Danny walked in, and they shoved him behind them like they were protecting him from me." He huffed and humorless laugh. “Guess you can imagine how that went”
He let out a wet, shaky sigh, wiping his face with his shoulder, dampening the sleeve of Wally's shirt—a bitter irony that wasn't lost on him. "And even now... after all that... when Danny was bleeding out on the floor and all I could do was hold him. I was so, so scared... he was the only one I could think to call. I didn't know who else to call."
Sam’s lip curled, a flash of pure, undiluted fury in her eyes. "They're self-righteous pricks," she cut in, her voice a low, sharp blade. "They did the exact same thing to Danny that they accused you of—they watched him, they followed him, they decided who he was without his consent. The hypocrisy is fucking staggering." She was silent for a moment, a storm of conflicting emotions warring behind her eyes. "And I hate that you had to make that call," she said finally, her voice tight. "I'm so fucking angry, on his behalf and on yours, that after everything they put you through, they were your only option." She looked toward the bed, her gaze softening for a fraction of a second at the sight of Danny's steady breathing. "But I am also... god, I'm so grateful you did. They saved his life. That's a debt I can't ever ignore, even if I want to strangle them with my bare hands for everything else."
She turned her fierce gaze back to him. "You were in an impossible position, and you did the one thing that mattered. You put his life above your pride, above the hurt. And that's the only reason he's still here." Her gaze softened and so did the hold in her crossed arms. “For that, Thank you.” She blinked away tears and took a breath. “You went there with him. You stayed by his side. You saved Danny's life and that's something I can't thank you enough for.” She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed lightly, smiling wetly at him.
This seemed to drain the last of Wes's defenses. He finally turned fully to face her, his expression one of utter shame. He was talking to his real girlfriend, someone that was actually close to him, and cared, and loved. The weight of that felt crushing. "I didn't do shit, Sam.” He looked away ashamed “I heard the explosion," he began again, his voice gaining a ragged edge as the memory overwhelmed him. He hugged himself tighter. "I ran in and he was just… there. On the floor. Crawling. Leaving a… a trail. I couldn't do anything. I just froze." He looked at Sam, desperate and lost. "I’m always just watching him. What's the difference between the kid with the camera in the shadows and the guy who freezes in the doorway? I'm still just… watching."
Sam listened, she dropped her hand from Wes' shoulder gently and crossed her arms. This time he didn't move to comfort him. Instead, she gave him the hard truth, like a veteran soldier to a new recruit.
"Wes, you called the right people," she said, her voice flat and certain. "You got him out of that house. You held his hand while he was... like that.” Her voice was choked, but she kept going, knowing she had to say this and that Wes needed to hear it “You knew about his kit. You administered the one thing that could save him." She took a step forward, her gaze pinning him in place. "You think that's nothing? That's everything."
Wes flinched, wanting to argue, but she pressed on, her voice gaining a hard, experienced edge. "Tucker and I spent years feeling exactly how you feel right now. The paralyzing fear. The helpless rage. Watching him walk into danger and knowing you can't follow, that all you can do is wait and hope he comes back in one piece." She finally uncrossed her arms, her expression softening only a fraction into something like grim solidarity. "You learn to live with it. It never gets easier, but you get stronger. You become the person he can collapse in front of, because you're the one who knows the score, and you're the one who won't fall apart."
She wasn't offering forgiveness for the past. That was a separate ledger. This was a validation of his present, a grim induction into a club nobody wanted to join. She was handing him a new role: not the observer in the shadows, but a new pillar in the storm.
Wes stared at her, the truth of her words seeping through the cracks in his guilt. He hadn't been useless. He had been the first responder, an anchor of sorts. The realization didn't erase the past, or the pain, but it began to build a foundation for the future right on top of the wreckage.
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Awareness returned to Danny not as a gentle dawn, but as a slow, painful tide of sensation. A deep, throbbing agony radiated from his side, a sickening counterpoint to the sharper, stinging pains mapping his arms and legs. He was aware of weights on the bed, warmth on either side. The soft, steady rhythm of one breath was close to his ear; another, more ragged, came from further away.
He cracked his eyes open. The room was dim, pre-dawn grey filtering through the blinds. Sam was asleep on the bed beside him, in her black pajamas, curled on her side facing him. Her hand was resting lightly on his arm. On the floor bedside, Wes was also asleep, slumped forward with his head and arms resting on the mattress, one hand curled near Danny’s. They both looked wrecked.
The sight anchored him, pulling him fully into the present. The apartment. Wes. The searing, alien pain that felt like his very cells were being unmade.
The lab.
The memory slammed into him with the force of a physical blow. He hadn’t just been careless. He’d been arrogant.
He’d slipped into Fenton Works with the usual practiced stealth. The house had been silent, but the lab… the lab had hummed with a new, aggressive energy. On the central workbench, surrounded by the typical chaotic scatter of tools, was something new. It wasn't a blaster or a shield. It was a core, of sorts—a pulsating, crystalline device hooked up to a tangle of wires and the massive Fenton Thermos prototype. The "Ecto-Annihilator," they’d called it. A name he’d dismissed as typical Fenton hyperbole.
He’d seen the blueprints. The theory was to create a concentrated, "pure" anti-ectoplasmic field designed to destabilize a ghost’s core, forcing it to dissipate. He’d planned to do what he always did: subtly re-route a power conduit, introduce a critical flaw.
He’d reached for the main power relay, his fingers phasing just slightly to bypass the housing. And that’s when it happened.
The device hadn’t just been overloaded. It recognized him.
A feedback scream—not through speakers, but through the very ecto-energy in the air—had torn through the lab an instant before the blast. It wasn't just an explosion of metal and electricity. It was a wave of that intended "anti-ectoplasm," a violent negation that sought out what he was and tried to erase it. His ghost sense had erupted from him in a panic a second before impact, a desperate, involuntary shield that had likely saved his life by meeting the wave head-on. The resulting cataclysm was what saved him, his own energy fighting against a weapon designed to destroy it.
That’s why the burn had been corrosive. That’s why it had fought the medical aid. It wasn't a burn in the human sense. It was a piece of the Annihilator’s intended effect, lodged in his flesh, actively trying to unmake the ghost in him.
A cold dread, separate from the pain, settled in his gut. His parents' inventions had hurt him before—bruises, electrical shocks, rashes, lacerations, actual burns, you name it, he had it. But this was different. This was the first time their work had looked at the ghost in him and responded with deliberate, targeted abrasion. They weren't just building traps anymore; they were building a specific, intelligent poison. And he had walked right into the dose.
And his parents… He remembered the silence of the house. They hadn't been there. They’d built this thing and left it armed and unattended. The recklessness of it made him feel sick. The idea of his mom, cheerful and covered in grease, asking him about his day, or his father handing him a new batch of fudge hours after building a device that could have literally dissolved him from the inside out, was a cognitive dissonance that threatened to crack him in two. What if they had asked him to be there when they tested it? What if they decided it was one of the things to ask him to help with?
He had to sabotage their work to survive. But now, surviving their work felt like a war he was losing. How many more times could he walk into that lab before his luck ran out? Before they finally built something that deleted him on a molecular level?
He looked at Sam, her presence a steadfast comfort even in sleep. He looked at Wes, who had stood guard in his own way. He had a life here, fragile and complicated and real. A life his parents, in their loving, oblivious fervor, were getting better and better at obliterating.
The explosion in the lab hadn't just torn up his body. It had blown a crater in the fragile truce he’d built with his own existence. The walls between his two worlds were crumbling, and the fallout was going to burn everyone he cared about. He couldn't keep going with this, he couldn't keep trying to let his parents in his life when they, unintentionally, were actively trying to destroy it.
He closed his eyes, the weight of it all pressing down, heavier than any physical pain. The fight was no longer just about keeping a secret. It was about preventing an inevitable, home-grown apocalypse with his name on it. And for the first time, he wasn't sure he could win.
A low, pained groan escaped him as he tried to shift, the movement tugging viciously at the burn on his side. It was a small sound, but in the silent room, it was enough to alert anyone.
Sam’s eyes flew open instantly, her reflexes overriding sleep. "Danny?" she whispered, her voice raspy. Her hand tightened on his arm. "Are you with me?"
On the floor, Wes jolted awake, his head snapping up. Disorientation flashed across his face for a second before it was replaced by stark relief and concern. "You're awake. How... how do you feel?"
"Like I got into a fight with a shredder and lost," Danny gritted out, his voice rough with sleep and pain. He tried to offer a reassuring smile, but it felt more like a wince. The simple act of breathing was a conscious effort.
Sam was already moving, her practiced eyes scanning him. She gently peeled back the edge of the bandage on his side, checking the dressing. The sight of the angry, blistered flesh beneath the silvery mesh made her jaw tighten, but she nodded. "It's not getting worse. The green is gone. It's just a... a normal, terrible burn now." She said, pursing her lips and rearranging the bandage.
Danny looked from Sam’s worried face to Wes’s exhausted one. “How long was I out?” “A few hours. It’s already morning,” Wes said, his voice low and looking at the window, noticing the stray rays of sunlight filtering through it, and the back at Danny. “You… you gave us a scare.”
The memory of the terrifying, corrosive burn actively eating him alive made him shudder.
“The lab…” Danny began, but Sam cut him off.
“We know. Wes told me what he saw.” Her jaw was set. “What was that, Danny? It wasn’t a normal burn of an EctoRay.”
Danny took a shaky breath, the image of the pulsating core clear in his mind. “It was a new weapon. They called it the Ecto-Annihilator. It’s not a trap. It’s… it’s designed to target a ghost’s core. To erase it.”
Wes paled. “It knew what you were.”
“It recognized my energy,” Danny confirmed, the truth of it tasting like ash. “When I tried to sabotage it, it reacted. My ghost sense went off right before it blew. It was trying to unmake me.”
The room was silent, the implication hanging in the air. This was a new, terrifying escalation.
“They’ve crossed a line,” Sam said, her voice cold. “This isn’t just ghost hunting anymore. This is… genocide.”
That horrifying word was the final straw. It shattered the dam holding back a lifetime of fear, resentment, and desperate love.
"Why?" he choked out, the word feeling like ground glass in his throat as he looked from Sam to Wes to the ceiling, his composure crumbling. "It's always them."
"Danny..." Sam started, her voice softening.
"They built a weapon that can erase me, Sam!" The words were a ragged whisper, filled with a terror he never allowed himself to show. "And they probably don't even know I was there! They're at some convention or in another hunt, I didn’t even know they weren't home until I went there. They are out there completely oblivious that they almost murdered their son, Again"
Wes looked stricken. He knew things were bad, Danny closed off at the minor mention of his parents, and logically, he knew it wouldn’t be pretty with them being hunters and him their specific prey. But it felt wrong to see how raw it made Danny feel.
"I moved out to get away from this," Danny continued, the words tumbling out faster, fueled by a pain deeper than any burn. "To have a life where I wasn't constantly looking over my shoulder in my own kitchen. But I can't escape it. I'm tethered to them by this... this stupid, loving sense of responsibility! I have to go back! I have to make sure they haven't blown themselves up or poisoned themselves with ectoplasm-tainted coffee!"
His voice began to rise, losing its shaky quality and gaining the sharp edge of long-suppressed fury.
“I never had a say in any of this” He whispered brokenly, causing both Sam and Wes to flinch. “I moved out, tried to take my life in my own hands and guide it toward what I actually want… and still… I go back there because I love them, and I fear that me leaving will be the cause of them dying. I know how they are and I know they are a danger to themselves.”
There was a heavy silence. Sam squeezed his hand, her own eyes glittering with unshed tears. She understood this conflict better than anyone—the love that warred with the sheer, self-preserving need to run.
“But they are also a danger to you, Danny,” she said, her voice soft but unwavering. She wasn't accusing him; she was stating the terrifying, inescapable fact that lay at the center of his entire existence.
Danny let out a shuddering, wet sigh, all the fight gone out of him. He closed his eyes, a single tear tracing a path through the grime still on his temple.
“I know…” he whispered, the admission sounding like a surrender. “I know.”
In the quiet that followed, Wes, who had been a silent witness to this raw confession, finally spoke. His voice was quiet, but firm.
"Then we protect you," he said. Both Danny and Sam turned to look at him. He wasn't the scared, guilty kid from the hallway anymore. He was the one who had held Danny together on the kitchen floor. "That's the job now. We can't change your parents. We probably can't stop them from building things. But we can make sure you don't have to walk into that house alone. We can be your lookout. We can be the ones who drag you back when your sense of responsibility tries to get you killed." He looked at Sam, who gave him a slow, solemn nod of agreement. "You shouldn’t carry the weight of their safety and your own by yourself anymore. Not if you have us."
It wasn't a solution to the impossible problem of his parents. But it was a promise. A new foundation. The war wasn't over, but for now, he could breathe a bit easier, finally letting himself rely on others. He hated putting his friends in danger, but maybe, having them by his side would be safer for everyone than walking alone in the dark.
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Oof . That's a charged one guys, also almost 5k wow, It did get to the 5k but I had to take some stuff for the next one. And I can officially say we are almost done. I already have 18 outlined and it seems its gonna be long enough to also be 19. And just for my OCD sake, I'm gonna make and Epilogue to complete all 20 parts. Yay! Lemme know what you think and how you feel about this incoming end.
