Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Consciousness comes to him slowly; hazy and dreamlike, and thick like molasses. As if someone was leisurely walking through every room in the house and flicking each of the lights on. Or like the steady hum of a spaceship steadily waking up from its slumber. 

His breathing is the first thing Danny becomes cognizant of. A familiar, comforting relief behind the action that even after dying he still takes for granted. The next thing he realizes is that even as air fills his lungs, there is a three pound weight in his chest attempting to stifle him. Or maybe more accurately it’s like there’s a cotton filter in his sternum. When he tries to push past it, his body shudders, and a teeny squeak still slips through his throat as his lungs protest in discomfort. 

The noise fast-tracks his waking, and the rest of Danny’s body hums to life. The next thing he realizes is the ache in his bones; a thrumming burn through his tissue that reminds him far too much of the first time Sam dragged him and Tucker into working out with her, and the next morning he woke up with muscles so sore that his knees trembled when he sat down. 

At least that time there was a strange pride that came with the ache, and it was enough to soothe him. This time, the only thing that soothes him is the fact that he hurts significantly less than before— 

Before…

Like a final switch being flipped, everything rushes back to him at once. Vlad, the blood blossoms, the alleyway, the high ceiling room and the hero-man-bat-guy who saved him—  

Holy fuck.

Danny’s eyes shoot open, air rapidly rushing into his lungs as, with a burst of adrenaline, he pushes himself up. His head spins and black motes dot his vision, but he ignores his body’s protests. “I’m alive.” He breathes, disbelief dousing over him, the words slipping out before he’d even thought them in his head. His voice is raspy, scratchy like he’s got a cold. Shit, that hurt. 

Despite that, he laughs; loud and freely even when his lungs catch in his chest, stuttering, and a weak cough slips out. But there’s no blood in his throat, none coming up for him to spit out, so the weak fear that flutters in his heart at the sound just as quickly tapers away. It’s a cough because his lungs are sore, not because he’s dying.

He runs his hands through his hair, feeling the individual strands despite the sleep-tangled knots his fingers catch on. Slightly soft, but thick, the hair at his roots feels dirty and the hair hanging at his nape is stringy. When he looks at his palms, he can faintly see some of the oils shining on his fingertips. 

More laughter bubbles out of him, tears springing to his eyes and dewing on his lashes. It kinda hurts to laugh the same way it hurts to breathe after running a mile, but Danny does it anyway. His recollection of last night was fuzzy at best, only growing more incomprehensible as it went on, but he remembers blearily the joy that starburst through him when the Bat-Man got him an antidote. It was coming back for another round.  

He runs his hands through his hair again, less out of a need to touch it and more out of habit, and lets his palms rest around his throat. “He did it.” He croaks, grinning at absolutely nothing, “Haha! He did it!” 

Shit, he knows he went through this revelation last night but he was still so happy. He was alive, and man that felt so good to say. He loves being alive. Danny breathes in again, deep, and joy buzzes beneath his skin at the feeling of it. Everything still hurt, but it was all pale in comparison to the agony he was in last night. It was like choosing between a too-warm summer’s day, and the full concentrated power of the sun. 

He pats his fingers against his throat, for a moment just appreciating the feeling of skin touching skin, before pressing his index and middle finger against his pulse. His throat grows thick, delight threatening to choke him out whole, at the slow, steady, thump—thump—thump beating against his skin. Shit, shit, shit. Has he mentioned he loves being alive? 

Another laugh escapes him, before Danny drops his hands, purposely letting them rub over his arms as they fall into his lap. Okay, he thinks, blinking and trying to focus on more than the feeling of being alive. Okay, okay, okay. He has to figure out where he is now. 

Because wherever he was? Was not the room he passed out in. In fact, he’s not even sure he’s in the same building. Maybe. Probably. He wasn’t on that metal table anymore; instead he was in a massive canopy bed instead. It was huge, seriously. Two of his dads could lay in and there would still be room for his mom, him, and Jazz. And the mattress was so soft that Danny felt like he’d sink right into it like quicksand if he moved. 

Jesus, he thinks, curling his fingers around the ‘Sam Manson’ purple duvet. His mirth over being alive steadily cooling down and turning over into disbelief. The room itself was— wow, even bigger than his bedroom in Vlad’s manor, and straight out of a gothic vampire novel. With a high ceiling and pointed arches and intricate tracery— Danny exhales out through his mouth. 

Maybe he’s listened in on Sam’s rants about gothic architecture way too many times and it rubbed off on him, but he can’t help but admire it all. There was no way this was Vlad’s place — for multiple reasons that he doesn’t need to go over — but he still has no idea whose place he was in. Was it that Bat-Man guy? A friend of his? 

Danny’s hands tremble as he tries pushing himself back, and he makes it less than a foot before his arms nearly give out — and, oh. He should probably check on himself before anything else too. He’s shaking, not violently, but shaking. Right, yeah, he probably should’ve expected that. Blood blossoms. Cannibalistic flowers but only to ghosts. It’d been chewing on him like a tiger with a slab of meat for a while before he found Bat-Man. He’s weak. 

His legs— do his legs work? He tries to lift his left leg, and for the most part there’s a small burn in his thigh and calf up until his knee starts to bend — then the burn sharpens, his muscles tighten, and a sharp pain shoots down his knee. Fuck, Danny hisses out involuntarily, lurching over as his leg drops and spasms. When he tries it with the right, he gets the same result. 

Fumbling to push off the blanket, Danny gets most of it shoved off before he wraps his hands around the meat of his thigh and starts trying to massage the pain away. Ow, that hurt. That hurt a lot. He probably should’ve expected something like that, ow. Ow, ow, ow. 

On the brighter side of things, he can feel his legs! He can move them. Danny just needs a little healing. Maybe, um, not with his ectoplasm. Not for now, just to be safe. Natural healing, unfortunately. Living, natural healing, that is. He’s alive. He can do that. 

Breathing, as stifled as it feels right now, is so nice. Danny continues massaging his thigh for another few seconds, before moving down to his calf, and then alternating to his other leg. The worst of the ache fades away, and Danny carefully lifts his leg and moves it until he’s sitting criss-cross.

…With plenty of breaks in between, from both the soreness in his muscles, and how weak his arms are right now. It’s also while he’s doing this that Danny realizes that he’s not wearing his Humpty Dumpty band tee. Which is an embarrassing amount of time to realize considering the shirt he was in now was borderline comically big on him. It was a faded AC/DC shirt that made him feel even scrawnier than he already was — something he was never sure the reason for; dying at eleven, or simply unlucky genes — and while it wasn’t falling off him, it was absolutely not his size. 

He was still wearing his jeans from last night though — they still fit him, and there was blood stained black in the denim. Splatter and smeared, probably from his hands. Danny silently pulls the covers back to check if he got any stained on the bedding. He did not. Cool, one less thing to feel bad about. 

Tugging on the edge of the shirt, pulling it forward to look at the writing and watching incredulously as the fabric wings out, Danny’s brows furrow together. “Whose shirt is this?” He mutters, and again, where the fuck was he?  

“It’s one of mine.” 

Danny clamps down viciously on the shriek that lunges into his throat, he gasps sharply, sounding too much like a zipper being shut, with a full-body flinch. His fingers let go of the shirt, and he instinctively twists towards the noise, hunching up defensively even as he chokes on a mote of dust. “You—!” He wheezes, throat swelling at the opening to cough. “—fuck—”

Sitting in the corner is a fucking dude. A whole ass man. How the fuck— Danny has fought ghosts for the last three years, and he likes to think that he’s gotten pretty damn good at not getting snuck up on regardless of his ghost sense. He likes to think he’s got some pretty good situational awareness, so how the fuck—  

He loses the fight with his lungs and descends into a coughing fit. Tears spring to the corner of his eyes and Danny fluctuates between rubbing them away and keeping an eye on the fucking guy that’s been there for who the hell knows how long. Laughing hurt, but coughing hurts even more, like someone was raking their nails down the inner tissue and then using it as their own personal slime ASMR. 

The man who’d spoken practically materializes at his side, having crossed the shadowy corner he was lurking in within the length it took Danny to blink twice. He hovers beside Danny for a few moments, hands flailing in reservation at his side, and Danny’s not sure himself if he should move away from the stranger or focus on coughing.

The bed then dips, and Danny drops his arm to catch his weight before he falls over. As he does, a heavy hand awkwardly splays between his shoulder blades while the other pushes on his arm, helping him stay up. Danny forces one, watering eye to open and stare at the man, and through the blur of his tears and his eyelashes, he sees the man uncomfortably, pointedly looking away from him. 

The hand on his back starts gently patting his spine, it doesn’t really do anything to help with his coughing, but the attempt is kinda sweet, and it’s soft enough that it’s not obstructing him either. “Sorry.” The man murmurs, his voice low. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” The words come out slightly stilted, consonants bleeding together despite the stiffness. 

Wait a minute. Danny jerks slightly, familiarity hitting him like a shot to the head, and still covering his mouth with his arm, he turns to try and look at the man fully. His mind flashes to last night and the few times he can remember the Bat-Man speaking. His voice wasn’t as raspy as before, but the intonation… there was no denying that it was the same person. 

That’s… actually a little comforting to know. He felt a little better now knowing that there was at least someone familiar with him. Even if the Bat-Man was as familiar as a street sign. He saved Danny’s life, he could trust him — at least a little bit — for now. 

His coughing manages to subside enough for Danny to find his tongue, and he drops his arm in order to breathe in deep, “It’s—” he wheezes, “it’s fihh— fine.” Another few short coughs squeeze out of him, but Danny pounds a fist against his rattling chest and they finally dissipate. His lungs burn, and he forces himself to sit up. “W’s just startled.” 

The man says nothing, and as Danny rubs the hack-caused tears from his eyes he finally tries to get a look at him. None of the lights were on, and most of the windows had these big, heavy ornate curtains drawn closed around them, but the ones that didn’t had gray sunlight peeping through the glass, leaving just enough light for Danny to see most of the room. But leaving enough darkness for, apparently, a grown man to hide in it. Okay— well, that sounds creepy when he puts it that way. 

Point is, there was enough light in the room that Danny could see the man’s face. His hair was black like Danny’s, although neither quite as long — not surprising, he hasn’t cut his hair since his family’s funeral a few months ago, and he’s gonna put a glass box around that thought before his grief can overwhelm him — or as messy, and sat flat on his head. He was pale as a ghost; Danny’s tempted to put his arm next to his and see who was whiter — the man or the literal dead kid.    

(He shelves the thought for now.)  

He can’t exactly call him gaunt, quite the opposite actually, but the sharp cut face of his face and the weight carving lines in his skin casts an optical illusion that Danny almost doesn’t see through. The circles under his eyes certainly don’t help. 

It’s his eyes themselves, however, that make Danny’s heart jump and his throat catch unexpectedly. They’re as blue as glaciers, and as equally piercing, but it’s not the color that makes Danny’s heart pound uncomfortably. It’s the fact that looking into them, Danny can see his own. He didn’t notice that last night. He was dying last night. 

Danny swallows dryly. His fingers curl in his lap, digging into the soft duvet. “Um, I’m uh, Danny.” He forces himself to look away and scan the room again, “Where am I?” Get that question out of the way first and foremost, then he can ask the others. Like how long has he been unconscious, what he should call the man, and how long, exactly, had he just been lurking there in the corner of the room. 

(Because if the answer was ‘the whole time’ Danny was going to die of embarrassment and shame. That’s at least a nicer second way to go than being eaten alive by a parasitic anti-ghost flower.) 

The man is silent again, remaining so for a few seconds too long before finally answering. “You’re in my house.” He says, his voice still murmuring soft. Danny already guessed that, but still, surprise jumps in his chest like the crack of an egg being dropped on the floor. He wasn’t really expecting him to readily admit that. “I brought you here after you passed out.”

His surprise turns into an uncomfortable guilt, shame curling around the shell of his ears and weighting at the nape of his neck. At what, he wasn’t quite sure — whether it be from the fact that he passed out, or because it was now beginning to dawn on him that the man had given up his secret identity for him. Even though he didn’t know his name, Danny still knew his face, and from one hero to another, he was beginning to feel bad.  

(Even if the idea of calling himself a hero was uncomfortable at best, and skin-crawling at worst. He was just doing what he had to in Amity Park. He couldn’t leave the living to the ghosts, and he couldn’t leave the ghosts to the living. There was no one else but him who could do it.) 

Danny’s fingers release the duvet, only to grip it again. The joints in his fingers were starting to ache from use, and he ignores the pain to knead at the blanket. “Oh. Thanks, you didn’t have to do that.” He would’ve been fine waking up in that big room with the lights just fine too, would’ve felt less bad about it.   

From his peripherals, the man’s mouth purses. “Hn.” With Danny no longer looking at him directly, the man was now looking at him instead. “The cave wasn’t a good place to keep you.” 

Ah. Cool. Great. Danny’s not sure how to respond to that, so he nods mutely. It’s almost fascinating — perhaps even worth studying — how quickly things had shifted to being uncomfortable and stifled, with the air thick with their conjoined awkwardness to create an atmosphere thicker than Gotham’s polluted sky.  

Shit, there were a lot of things Danny should ask about. Like the man’s name, where exactly was his house in Gotham — because from the size of this bedroom alone he had to wonder how big the whole house was and where that would fit with the rest of the city. — and most importantly, what’s going to happen now? Danny’s fixed — he thinks, he hopes, — and well, just, what now? Is he going to be kicked out? How long until the man’s hospitality runs dry and he asks him to leave? Will he let Danny heal some more or is he going to fend for himself by the day’s end? 

His words stick themselves in the back of his throat, and Danny feels ill at the idea. He really, really doesn’t want to leave immediately. He can barely move his legs and there’s no telling whether or not Vlad is prowling the streets for him right now, he can already imagine what kind of fuss he’s kicking up right about now. Is he going to involve the local authorities? Gotham’s police aren’t worth a penny of salt but Vlad’s a billionaire and when you’re rich, anything is possible. 

With all these thoughts running a mile a minute in his head, Danny only notices Bat-Man pulling his hands away from him — he totally forgot about them even being on him, — because the chill blanketing over his skin snaps him out of it. That is, snaps him out of it too fast. Panic lodges in his chest like a steamhammer and Danny gives himself whiplash with how quickly he rubberbands around, snagging his hands around the man’s wrist like a bear trap locking around a rabbit. 

“Please don’t go.” He begs, heart pounding loudly in his ears. The words don’t even pass through his mind before they’re already tumbling past his lips, not even allowing Danny the grace of thinking it through before he just does. The man stills, freezing like a statue as his eyes widen in surprise. 

Danny stares at him, eyes equally as wide and desperate, and then his mind syncs back up to the world around it. Oh, he thinks, mortification rapidly burning through his face. Shit. He has no idea why he did that. It’s — shit, why did he do that? 

He releases the man from his iron grasp, his hands trembling and that was either from exertion or his own horror. Danny was going to pretend it was the former, for his own sake. His face felt like it was on fire, and he probably matched the red blooms of the blood blossoms with what was undoubtedly a blush. Danny stammers; “I’m— uh, sorry.” He says, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that. You— uh, sorry.” 

He was being clingy, why was he being clingy? It was the same thing as last night when that Alfred guy pulled his hand away from him. At least this time his core didn’t react so negatively with him, it was still as dormant as it has been for months. He shouldn’t be clingy. He barely knows this guy. 

Bat-Man unmasked again remains silent, simply just staring at him like a deer caught in headlights. Danny shrinks away from him out of sheer embarrassment, the feeling fisting around his ribcage and rattling them like jail cell bars. He hides his face behind his hands with a nervous little laugh-whine building in his throat. “I just— I’m sorry. That’s so embarrassing.” He forces himself to laugh, it sounds painful and it feels painful. 

He can’t get the panic to go away, can’t shake away the trembling, terrified little voice telling him that the man was going to go away now. It clings on him like tar, and his only reprieve is the fact that it’s not triggering the electric buzz of his core.   

“I just— Vlad hasn’t let me leave his mansion at all since my mom and my dad and my sister’s funeral, and— and it was only ever me and him in that house and I hhhh—” Danny’s voice disgustingly breaks. His tongue thickens in his mouth, and more tears pop up into his vision, hot and burning and bleeding out again. 

Danny presses the meat of his palm into his mouth to muffle whatever ugly noise he might make, biting into the skin with just enough force that his fangs don’t break through and cause a bleed. He’s tasted enough blood to last him a lifetime, thank you. 

Squeezing his eyes shut, Danny shivers down his spine, and fumbles for his voice again. “I hhhh-ate him. I hate him so much.” He wishes so badly that Aunt Alicia had gotten custody of him like she fought to do, because even if he’d be in Arkansas he wouldn’t be with Vlad, and he loves his Aunt Alicia and he knows she loves him. And if he was in Arkansas on her little ranch he wouldn’t have gotten poisoned.  

But instead he was forced to live with Vlad, and he no longer believes that future version of him he met that told him that it was Danny who chose to rip out his own ghost. Everything he wants to say hooks itself at the base of his tongue and sticks in his throat, forcing him instead to swallow it down and try and speak again. The bubble of tears in his eyes pop and stream down his face.  

He’s been so alone since his family died. He hasn’t been able to talk to Sam and Tucker because Vlad stole his phone when he wasn’t looking, too encased in grief to notice anything past his own nose, and he misses them so much. He wouldn’t give him back the phone no matter how many times Danny pleaded and threatened and cried, and every day felt like torture in that house. 

“I just— I just don’t want— don’t want him to find me.” Danny gasps, his chest caving in with a cut off sob. He scrubs his knuckles, worn and rough from years of fighting, against his eyes as he sucks in a breath. “I— please don’t let him find me. Please. I’m sorry for grabbing you, please don’t go.” 

His chest shudders with every breath he takes, and Danny shoves his hands into his face to scrub away his desperate crying. He doesn’t know why he’s crying so much, he doesn’t know why he’s so upset, and the man stays silent the whole time. Danny can’t tell if that’s somehow better, or worse. 

There isn’t long to wonder about it. The man lifts his hand hesitantly, lets it hang in the air for a few, long moments, his eyes wide and unsure, before dropping it down again. “I won’t, Danny.” He finally says, and Danny heaves with a relief that he could vomit up. “And your godfather won’t find you, I won’t let him. I—” The man’s mouth presses together, “…I promise.” 

Danny’s not a kid, hasn’t felt like one since he was eleven and dead, so he doesn’t believe in promises. But he’ll hinge on this one for the time being. 

When he’s finally calmed down again, Danny is exhausted. His chest hurts, his eyes ache, and he’s sore all over, his shoulders ache from moving his arms so much and it still feels better than he did last night. But the man sits with him the whole time, silent as a rock and about as still as a gargoyle. It’s no wonder Danny didn’t notice him earlier, if it weren’t because he could see him, he would’ve forgotten he was even there. 

But when he can finally find his voice again, and use it without it breaking, Danny uses it to ask his next important question; “What do I call you?” He’s tired of calling him ‘the man’ and ‘bat-man’ in his head. 

The man stiffens almost imperceptibly, and if it weren’t because Danny’s spent the last three years fighting ghosts — who, by the way, use a lot of their body language to communicate —  he probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all. An apology is already building up on the tip of Danny’s tongue, you don’t have to tell me, he’s going to say. You’ve already shown me your face, and let me into your house and secret base, and lent me a shirt. 

He watches as his face twitches and ink-presses into discomfort, (and the longer Danny watches him the more he is reminded of those little dogs that look like they’ve gone through Vietnam with the big, unseeing blue eyes) before the man clears his throat. “My name is Bruce.”

Danny blinks; once, twice. “Bruce?” He repeats. Huh. It’s not a name he was expecting, but it’s not like he was expecting any kind of name from him. It suits him. The man, now named Bruce, nods curtly, looking as if he swallowed a lemon. Danny’s midwestern manners comes and kicks him right in the head right then and there, and he adds; “It’s nice to meet you.” 

Bruce stares at him, and then only nods again with a tiny exhale and a noise Danny can’t quite call a grunt, but is the closest description to it. He makes a short noise in his throat that’s too deep to be a squeak, but is about as short as one. 

But they both fall into a silence again after, with Danny staring at Bruce and Bruce staring at Danny. Danny’s got more questions he’d like to ask, but they kinda just… linger in his head and don’t bother to travel down to his throat to be spoken. His fingers curl in his lap, and he’s the first to look away and lose their silent unspoken staring contest.

Which is, apparently, exactly what Bruce needs. He shifts, shoulders rolling back, and starts moving off the bed — for a brief, terrifying moment, that horrid earlier panic recoils back in Danny’s chest and he almost, almost, lunges to grab onto him. ‘You said you wouldn’t leave!’ He nearly yells, and catches his voice by the skin of his teeth. 

His eyes glue onto him with terrifying intensity instead, and he acutely becomes aware of his own breathing and forces it to remain steady. Danny thought he hid it well, but Bruce notices something, because he freezes, and settles back down onto the bed. It creaks quietly under the weight.

“Are you hungry?” He asks. 

Danny balks. What? “What?” 

“Are you hungry?” Bruce repeats, “I can have Alfred make you something.” 

Alfred. Danny’s mind procures a mental image of the older man he saw last night. The one with the cane and the handkerchief that he got all bloody. Embarrassment coils in his chest, burning hot like iron. Danny breathes it out. “I— sure, yeah. Can I come with?” He doesn’t want to be alone. 

Immediately Bruce frowns, his brows threading together with an expression Danny can’t read. His heart skips a beat, and Danny’s mouth runs dry. Or not, he thinks, digging his nails into his palms and feeling like he just made a mistake, he could also just stay here. That works too.  

(It doesn’t, not really. Panic is still thrumming like a hummingbird beneath his heart.) 

Danny breathes, his mind stumbling, and he opens his mouth to say just that— only for Bruce to drop his ice eyes down to the bed and frown even deeper. “What about your legs?” 

His—? Danny looks down at his legs, most of which are still covered by the duvet and sheet, and suddenly remembers earlier when he tried to move them and the white hot, pin-sharp burn that shot through them when he tried. Realization settles down around his head, releasing his flutter-heart from the panicked claws surrounding it. Oh, that’s why, he thinks, tension draining from his shoulders. He was just worried about Danny’s legs. 

…Wait, he saw that?

(That reminds him again that Danny needs to ask how long Bruce had been sitting there.)

“They don’t hurt that bad.” Danny lies, something that’s far too familiar to him. From a technical standpoint, he’s not even wrong. They didn’t hurt that bad in comparison to some of the other injuries he’s gotten over the years. He keeps his eyes locked on Bruce, and watches as the man’s eyes twitch around the corners, just barely squinting. “I can walk.”

Danny stares at him easily, despite the hammering returning to his chest. 

Bruce looks at him for a few long seconds, before reluctantly, he backs off, and raises to his feet. “Okay.” He says, and stands up fully. Danny jerks, and triumph blooms up and outwards through the space between his eyes, and down to his sternum. “I’ll take you to the kitchen.” 

Yes. Yes! He wasn't staying in the bedroom, he was heading down to the kitchen with Bruce. Danny doesn’t bother quelling the giddiness swirling around like a flurry of snow inside him, pushing the blankets off him as far as he could and instinctively raising one of his legs — 

Only for the same, sharp sore pain to rocket from the back of his calves, around his knee, and through his thigh. Danny freezes on instinct, his teeth sinking down into the back of his bottom lip as air rapidly fills his lungs. Fuck. He thought some of it would have subsided by now.  

Bruce stands by the side of the bed with his brows still creased, the corners of his eyes still tight, and something in the way he stands just tells Danny that Bruce already knew he was lying. Well, the stubborn part of him that had gotten him through countless fights, through Pariah Dark and his own evil future self, rears its head at the unspoken challenge. 

Gritting his teeth and focusing on his breathing — focusing on his breathing always helps distract him from most of the pain — Danny digs his hands into the mattress, and starts pulling himself back to the headboard. As he’s doing that, he forces his legs to move towards the edge of the bed. Starburst shots stab through the sinew and tissue, aching up to his hips, and Danny, in response, grinds his teeth down harder. 

I’ve sewn my own head back on before, he thinks with a tight breath in. Many times, actually. He can handle a little leg pain. He doesn’t really want to, but he’s going to. From the corner of his eye, Bruce’s eyebrows climb up his forehead. 

Triumphantly, Danny manages to sit up to the edge of the bed. His legs are trembling, pulsing and throbbing with pins-and-needles in his knees, and his arms are shaking from holding himself up, but he did it. He’s only just now realizing that his shoes are missing and he’s barefoot. His eyes catch them sitting at the foot of the nightstand right next to the bed. Cool, there’s that mystery solved. 

Bruce hasn’t said anything the whole time Danny was getting himself to the edge of the bed, only moving to give him the space to sit while still remaining within an arm’s length. Danny’s a little grateful, it allowed him to focus on moving rather than responding to anything he might say. 

Although whatever that was, he wasn’t sure. He was starting to learn that the man wasn’t a sparkling conversationalist. 

Staring at the ground, Danny breathes out slow and braces his hands against the bed. Now for the hard part, and moment of truth — he might be able to move his legs, but could he stand? Well, he was about to find out. 

Counting down from three, Danny breathes in, breathes out, and ignores the sharpening burn through his calves as he tenses his legs up and pushes himself up to his feet. Hot, white pain screws itself from his soles and upwards, and Danny bites his lip down hard as his arms pinwheel from the elbow down to keep himself from falling over. 

Fuck, he exhales shakily, stumbling two feet forward before stopping. Shit that hurts a lot, like a combination of trying to walk when his feet are asleep, and muscle strain. From his peripherals, Bruce’s hands drop from his side and reach out for him like he’s about to catch him, his face twisted in concern. 

Danny’s half tempted to take his arm, but before that, he needs to see if he can walk — or at least shuffle — on his own. His legs are trembling despite his attempts to stop them, and the idea of his knees knocking together would almost be funny if it weren’t for his situation right now. Keeping his eyes glued to the floor, Danny threads his brows together and slowly, slothfully, takes one step towards Bruce. 

And then another. And another. He alternates between looking at his feet and glancing up to where Bruce is, until finally he can reach out and, tentatively, curl a hand around his arm and hold onto him. Bruce lets him. When he does, Danny looks up, slightly out of breath and his legs still shivering, and gives him his best cocky grin. 

It slants uncomfortable and awkward on his face, stiff from months of disuse, but it exists. “See?” He says, triumphant, “I told you I can walk. Lead the way.”