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It was a bit of a jarring sight, really.
A new kid, sitting right where Bart was supposed to be. The center of class, and of their attention. The boy had spiky blond hair and purposefully distressed clothing: a look that Bart would typically consider ridiculous and try-hard.
His mild frustration continued when this Donny, as Krabappel introduced him, made his quick-witted dig on the teacher’s name.
“Hey Krabappel, your name sounds like crab apple. Did you go sour waiting for someone to pick you?”
The class burst out laughing as the teacher muttered something Bart couldn’t hear.
Unfortunately, Donny continued to feed Bart’s jealousy. By lunchtime, he had already managed to impress Nelson and Milhouse, along with the rest of the school.
Worse, though, was Bart’s poorly executed imitation of the boy which ended up with a lot of laughs- laughs at him.
The annoyance vanished when Skinner confronted him about his magnet prank.
“Who is responsible for this?”
“I am, sir,” Donny stated.
Bart tried his best to hide his shock. Why would Donny, his rival and almost a complete stranger, cover up his prank? Bart found he was really just glad to be off the hook.
“Come see me after you’re done there,” he whispered to the other boy.
The next few days with Donny and Bart’s two other fellow pranksters passed by wonderfully. They had so many epic ideas, now with the addition of Donny to the group. After the others went home following a particularly energetic treehouse session, Bart spent a while by himself in the treehouse, thinking.
“Hey, mom’s looking for you, it’s almost dinner time,” Lisa said, climbing the ladder.
Bart glared at her slightly as she entered, just to assert the fact that this was his treehouse.
“What are you doing anyway?” She said, now taking a seat on the floor.
“Nothin’ really,” Bart kept his eyes fixed on the adjacent wall.
He was technically doing nothing. It was his brain that was going a mile a minute with thoughts. Thoughts of-
“Really? So this hanging out has nothing to do with your cool new friend” Lisa grinned.
Bart felt his face get warm. Weird.
“Well I was just, y’know, thinking. Of all our pranks and stuff,” Bart admitted. “Donny’s a really cool guy,” he added.
Lisa seemed to like this answer and smiled again, a little more smug this time.
“He’s kinda cute, too,” she said.
Bart rolled his eyes. Typical. She was probably just in here to get dirt on the new older boy she could obsess over for a while.
Barts face was warm again. Maybe it was something in those blue vines.
“Shut up Lis, and get out of my treehouse if you’re gonna talk about gross girly stuff,” he said, face now fully flushed.
Lisa just giggled and scampered down the rope ladder.
*
When Willie told Bart there was a rat among his friends, he didn’t want to believe it. Sure, it would make the fact that all his awesome pranks were backfiring make sense, but Bart just couldn’t understand why a kid would do that. Especially someone as loyal to him as his tight-knit group of pranksters.
So now here he was, dragging his long-time best friend and sidekick into a locker in the middle of nowhere. Whatever. Millhouse had to learn to stay out of Bart Simpson’s way.
So why did he still feel like something was off? Probably because the banner Skinner unrolled proudly read: “Springfield Elementary: prank-free for 14 days.”
Bart rolled his eyes and held the opposite corner of the banner. That’s when he saw it. Skinner’s tongue was blue. His heart sank.
“How could he do this to me?” Bart whined to Lisa, laying on her bed as she calmly wrote in her journal at her desk.
Lisa closed the book and turned to him.
“Sounds like you really liked this kid huh?” she said.
Bart whines into the arms covering his face.
“Yeah,” he replies weakly. “Thing is, I’ve never actually cared for someone like I wanted to for him,” he said, though he regretted it as soon as it left his mouth.
He heard Lisa shift in her chair as she digested this.
“Maybe you should tell him, then,” she suggested.
Bart sat up, his face red once again.
“Are you kidding, Lisa? Everything he ever did was fake, if I told him I actually enjoyed spending time with him it would be like, I don’t know, asking for ketchup without ordering fries or something,” he was bad at analogies.
Lisa just shrugged, “then I guess all you can do is ride out whatever happens.”
“Screw this, Lis. I’m gonna prank him harder than he’s ever been pranked before,” Bart said, a look of steely determination crossing his face.
Lisa shrugged again, and Bart got up and went to his room to plan.
The prank didn’t go as planned. Willie revealed himself to be the “rat within the rat” and Bart thought there was no getting out of whatever month long detention or 10 day suspension awaited him as Skinner and Chalmers advanced.
The last couple weeks had been full of surprises, however, so Bart shouldn’t have doubted his new friend. (Or was he back to being his enemy? Bart wasn’t sure at this point)
When the diet coke and mentos collided, Bart thought for sure he would go down in the crossfire. Then he felt a hand hoist him up by the arm, and he didn’t have time to think further as the sounds of fizz and grown men screaming filled his ears.
But the hand, or rather, the person it was attached to, continued to pull him up and eventually through the hatch in the warehouse ceiling, until the two were stood on the roof, the chilly spring night air floating around them.
Donny finally appeared a little less suave, and a little more sincere as he locked eyes with Bart.
“So, you really do like me?” Bart found himself stating the obvious.
Donny just laughed, “I shouldn’t have done that, Bart, I wanted to back out of the whole thing when I first saw your magnet prank,” he looked at the ground, “I think you’re really cool.”
There was that damn heat in his face again. This time, it was extra strong, accompanied by a faster heart rate. The feeling made Bart more uneasy than he’d been all evening.
He opened his mouth to speak but found he couldn’t say anything. Donny just kept looking at him with those intense blue eyes and perfect face-
Oh god no. There’s no way.
Bart finally caught up to what his stupid brain had been trying to tell him the whole time. And Lisa, it seemed.
“I like you,” he squeaked out, heart now pounding.
There was no way he was going to live this down. Donny would tell everyone Bart Simpsons was gay for him and he would become the target of the entire school.
But Donny didn’t punch him in the face. He didn’t even laugh. He just stepped toward the other boy and took a deep breath.
“I thought you might say that,” he said.
Ah shit, even worse.
“Have you ever had a crush before, Bart?” Donny asked, completely sincere.
Bart finally met his eyes.
“I don’t know,” he replied truthfully.
All Bart knew was that the feelings he had for Donny were unlike any other feelings he had had for his friends before. He hasn’t wanted to be around someone like this, hasn’t wanted to just sit with someone and listen to them talk for ever, hasn’t wanted to hold someone’s hand or-
“Have you ever kissed anyone?” Bart questioned impulsively.
He immediately regretted it when he saw the look on Donny’s face. Bart noticed the other boy redden slightly. He counted that as win. At least they were both humiliated now.
“No,” Donny said quietly. “Do you want to try?”
Bart nodded subtly and quickly glanced around their area, just in case.
He planted a quick kiss on Donny’s lips, pulling away after the split second of contact, his heart hammering in his ears and his stomach curling in excitement and anxiety.
Donny was flushed.
“No, no, that’s not how you do it, haven’t you ever seen a movie?” He said jokingly.
Donny leaned in slowly, placing a gentle hand on Bart’s cheek. He closed his eyes. Bart figured he was probably supposed to as well.
Their lips met softly; Bart was surprised that kissing was like this. He felt the warmth of Donny’s lips and could almost sense the butterflies in his stomach and the inexperience in his actions.
They broke away again, both red and looking anywhere but at the other.
“Well,” Donny said and tried to smile confidently.
Bart laughed.
“We’ll meet up again soon, right?” Donny was at the ladder on the side of the warehouse.
Bart nodded. “See ya,” he said awkwardly.
Bart didn’t leave the warehouse until long after Donny left his sight, relishing in the cool night and the strange, new buzzy feeling in his body. Then finally, he took a deep breath and descended the ladder, rushing home to tell Lisa she was right all along.