"They're fine!" Sarah tells him for the billionth time.
Ethan doesn't slow his pacing, "They were in the abandoned shoe factory! It caught on fire! Maybe Rory got out but Benny's human!"
"I prefer to think of myself as more of a Greek God. Like Adonis-" but before Benny even gets through the door Ethan tackles him in a hug.
Benny starts, "All the evidence about unicorns burned-"
"I don't even care," Ethan says, voice muffled by Benny's shoulder.
"Crap!" Benny says, "Crap crap crap! Where am I supposed to find the hair of my true love? Do I even have a true love?"
"Erica?" Ethan suggests, watching Benny pace around Grandma's kitchen.
"Not likely. Even though she's the hot vampire babe of my hot vampire dreams, I think the love has to be mutual…"
Benny hears a snip and looks up to see Ethan offering a lock of his hair. "We've been best friends since we were six. I love you. And we're kind of out of options."
Benny adds Ethan's hair to the potion, there's a puff of green smoke and then thirty seconds of tense silence before Ethan's phone rings.
"You guys did it!" Sarah exclaims breathlessly. "The were-pigeons are dead!"
(And later, when Benny tells the story to prove that being resourceful trumps being prepared and Erica gives him the most incredulous face in the history of even and says, "Ethan's your true love?" and Benny says, "No, I just love him in a truly bro way," the hole she slams in the cafeteria wall with her head stays there for months until the custodians get around to fixing it)
"Okay," Ethan says, "Someone needs to go to the graveyard and someone needs to go keep lookout at the school."
"I call graveyard!" Benny shouts.
"Awesome!" Rory says, "I wanna go with B-"
"No!" Sarah shouts, snatching Rory away from the other boys, "I need you with me to help with. With… looking out."
"Cool." Rory grins, "I'm great at that."
As they fly up into the sky, Ethan can swear he hears Sarah admonishing Rory and the word "cockblocking".
He shrugs. That was weird.
"That was weird." Benny says, "But we had better get to the graveyard. Those dead bodies aren't going to defend themselves, you know."
There's a cursed DVD floating around town, making people try to drive their cars off bridges, and from what they can tell, it's an old copy of The Notebook.
They're at the last video store on the list of every single one in town and Ethan hands the DVD to the girl at the counter while Benny browses the candy.
"Date night?" the girl, no older than 18, asks with a knowing smile.
Ethan stammers and starts to correct her but then she's saying, "My boyfriend never lets me pick the movie. We always have to watch Evil Naughty Zombie Slashers or something," and Ethan neglects to mention that Evil Naughty Zombie Slashers is one of his favorite movies and then Benny's unloading an armful of gummy octopi and pizza-flavored nachos on the counter and then they're paying and leaving.
On the way out, Ethan looks back at the girl and she mouths He's cute!
He considers not telling Benny what just happened because it might be awkward or something, but it's not like the thought of dating Benny is disgusting. Just… odd. So he launches into the story with a "Dude. You won't guess what just happened."
("Grandma!" Benny squeaks, nearly dropping the book in his hands, "What is this? I don't even need this!"
He stares down in horror at Gay Sex & Wizardry. It stares back at him.
Grandma just fixes him with a smug look and says, "You will." She slides into her coat and says, "I'll be at the senior center."
"I still don't understand!" Benny calls after her, but she's already out the door.
Hesitantly, Benny opens the book to a random page. "Well," he says, "Objectively, that doesn't look that bad.")
Footsteps approach their hiding spot and Ethan takes a deep breath. He sends out a quick prayer for Jane not to get his room once he dies. "We're done for," he tells Benny. The only upside of this is if he had to pick someone to die with, it'd be Benny.
"Maybe not," Benny says, making his thinking face.
"What?"
"Fakeout Makeout!" Benny smashes their lips together and threads his hands through his hair.
Ethan freezes up, because what the hell, but then catches on to Benny's plan and kisses back, wrapping his arms around Benny's slim waist.
The footsteps stop in front of them and Ethan forces himself not to go completely still or throw up or anything else that might give them away.
"Seriously, you guys?" It's not the certain death he'd been expecting but it's Erica and she sounds pissed so it's a close second. "We're fighting demon blood smugglers and you guys are making out?"
"Fakeout makeout?" Benny defends weakly.
Erica throws her hands up in the air and says, "Humans. Can't take them anywhere."
"Try not to be completely useless for, like, four minutes." Erica hisses as she leads him into a corner, mostly concealed by boxes and crates.
She tells him to defend himself with his stupid magical powers if anyone directly attacks him, but to otherwise shut up and try not to attract any attention.
She drops Ethan's limp body on his lap and goes off to fight.
Ethan's going to be fine, he know, his seeing abilities just make him a little more sensitive to dark energy and he should wake up any minutes now, really. But the fact that he's totally still and his breath is shallow scares Benny more than he'd like to admit.
So he holds Ethan closer to him than strictly necessary, mostly to remind himself that Ethan's still here.
And if his grip doesn't relax even when Ethan starts to wake and stir in his arms, so be it.
Benny makes a face around his third slice of pepperoni pizza as Ethan says, "Plus, the girl can wear the same dress as Leia wore!"
"Please," Benny says, "A Star Wars wedding would be way too costume-y."
"And the wedding party in Star Fleet uniforms wouldn't be?"
"At least with a Star Trek theme, the vows can be in Vulcan. That would be-" Benny cuts off as soon as his hand brushes Ethan's when they both reach for the basket of French fries.
Ethan looks around the pizza place, dimly lit and full of quiet, intimate-looking couples. He looks as himself and Benny splitting a pizza and fries and leaning on the table to talk.
"Shit," he says as the realization dawns on him, "We're dating."
"Yeah," Benny agrees quickly, putting his pizza down and folding his hands in his lap. "We're totally dating."
They leave not too long after that, once Benny says, "Well. This is awkward," and Ethan says, "Yeah, this is totally awkward."
They walk home together in stilted silence.
At the path to Benny's door, Ethan offers "I uh. I had fun," but he sounds like he's asking a question and not thanking Benny for a good night.
"Me too," Benny tells him, looking anywhere but Ethan's eyes. He looks for a second like he might say something else but then he waves awkwardly and goes inside.
Ethan corners Sarah at her locker and asks, "How long have Benny and I been a thing?"
She makes a sympathetic face and says, "Just figured it out, huh?"
He tells her what happened and she tells him to soldier on and later bring him flowers a chocolate, "Or whatever the Ethan-and-Benny equivalent of flowers and chocolate is."
After a long day of avoiding eye contact and dodging an offensive number of questions about a lovers' quarrel, Ethan finds himself walking to Benny's with season 1 of Stargate Atlantis and a quart of ice cream and he literally bumps into Benny, who drops the video game and bag of gummy worms he had been holding.
"Grandma's not home," Benny tells him, "Want to come over?"
The inside of Benny's house is quiet and Ethan sets up the DVD on autopilot. As soon as he settles on the couch Benny says, "Listen," and when Ethan turns toward him, their faces are inches apart. Benny starts to lean in and-
CRASH!
Benny puts on a truly admirable you've-got-to-be-kidding-me look and says, "We have to go check that out, huh?"
"Yeah," Ethan says, "We probably do."
And seven hours later when they trudge bloody, muddy, and sore into the living room, the DVD menu plays for presumably the billionth time on TV and the ice cream has melted.
The boys flop down on the couch, nearly on top of each other, and Benny waves a dismissive hand when Ethan starts to make noise about ruining the upholstery. "I'll magic the stains away later," he says, which in all likelihood means he'll light the couch on fire trying.
Ethan shifts, like he's remembering what they had been doing before and is starting to feel awkward again.
"Dude," Benny tells him, "There's obviously something going on between us and I don't know why we're running from it. We've fought vampires, werewolves, and tonight, leprechauns-" they both shudder "-Dating is way less terrifying than all of those things combined."
He kisses Ethan squarely on the mouth and after a moment's panic, Ethan kisses back.
~seven years later
The twinkling lines of fairy lights hang mostly torn from the trees, the chairs are all knocked on their sides, and what had once promised to be a delicious cake lay in bits on the ground.
"There have been worse weddings," Benny reasons, still weak and leaning on Ethan from a particularly intense spell being reflected back at him.
"Plus," Ethan says, holding a bag of frozen peas to his shiny new black eye, "How many people can say their wedding was destroyed by a vampire turf war?"
"It's a shame about that cake, though." and they both go silent in solemn remembrance.
"Hey, lovebirds!" Erica shouts, "Think you could stop canoodling and help clean up?"
Heaving a sigh, Ethan stands up. The vampires should be the ones cleaning up, they're the ones who made the mess in the first place.
He extends a hand to help his husband -the very thought makes Ethan grin- up, but as soon as Benny's hand touches his, he gets a vision.
He sees himself and Benny as old as dirt sitting on the front porch, an ancient dog laying lazily at the feet and handful of kids in the yard doing cartwheels and flips and shrieking "Look, Poppop!" and "Grandpa! Watch this!"
"Everything okay?" Benny leans heavily on his shoulder and slides a protective arm across his lower back, studying him with concern.
"Yeah," Ethan says, "Everything's perfect."
This is ridiculous and unapologetic fluff and I'm not even sorry.
The title is from Roger Bonair-Agard's "Your Bed Is Too Small For Fucking And Poetry" because I just can't use classic poetry on Disney Channel shows. Also of note: This was not beta'd and was written entirely on Post-It Notes. And also also of note: "fakeout makeout" is totally from Danny Phantom, I have no taste in anything oh my god.
Review?