afriend (n)- the fond nickname given to an archer friend or an acrobat friend. used exclusively by artemis crock and dick grayson.
as revealed by asterush:
the idea of “afriends” was supposed to be a playoff of Dick’s habit of re-arranging words.
back when artemis was new to the team, he was dead set on establishing a rapport with her. so he told artemis that she was his afriend, explaining that the “a” was short for archer. she caught on and called robin her acrobat friend.
then throughout their relationship, they casually use afriend with each other: when dick’s trying to rile artemis and when artemis tries to wheedle dick. that sort of thing.
and when they finally do get together, they (dick in particular) make all sorts of quippy jokes about it. “you’re a grade agirlfriend” or “everyone we have an announcement: we’re acouple” and it’d be the kind of thing that’s only funny or meaningful to them.
tl;dr :: yes, i use it romantically.