Side Note: The time has come again for me to write yet another Benny/Ethan fic in regards to an upcoming holiday, and I must say that Christmas is both a favorite and a must. There is a fricking rainbow of material in this holiday, and anyone who says otherwise needs to be pelted with coal. Even if it's a stupid little kiss under the mistletoe (I say that with a sobbing laugh because mistletoe kisses are my fave sorry).
But anyways, here's my little Christmas gift to the fandom :D!
~.~.~
Once the sweater was on over his head, Ethan's first reaction was 'Absolutely not.', because the wretched garment made him look like a jar of Maraschino cherries. It was bright, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer red, and brought out his eyes in the most unappealing way and he had to fight very hard not to rip it off at once and curse Samantha for ever buying it for him.
His mother had bought him the sweater for the annual Morgan/Tanner Christmas Party, held at their cousin Annie's large house every first Saturday of December, and it had come with three siblings. His father had gotten the bright green one, his mother the deep purple, and Jane's was bright flaming pink with hideous white snowflakes around the entirety of it. No one but Samantha seemed to think it was a good idea but they didn't have the heart to tell her this.
But Ethan was already nervous about attending the party this year as it was, and the unflattering sweater wasn't helping in the slightest. It only made what little breakfast he had sucked down want to shoot back up, and he had to close his eyes on his reflection to avoid puking onto his mirror.
"Ethan!" Samantha yelled, pulling him away from his nausea. "Benny's here, sweetheart."
Ethan groaned and smashed his head against his closet door a few times, and when he opened his eyes and saw the sweater glaring back at him, his stomach jerked and he was already pulling it off before he could think about it. In the Narnian closet he possessed he pulled out another sweater the color of a deep, red French wine, and when he pulled it on his stomach settled and he gave himself a mental high five. It was still red, was what he told himself through the guilt, and with that he splashed on some cologne and slipped down the stairs.
His calm stomach rumbled again upon seeing Benny waiting by the door, wearing a navy blue sweater and looking absolutely stunning. His best friend looked up at him as he descended the stairs and when he smiled, his eyes warmed and crinkled at the edges and Ethan almost forgot why he was slowly beginning to descend into madness.
"Hey," he said breathlessly, and Benny replied by pulling him close and kissing him sweetly.
"Hi."
The two stared at each other and smiled as Samantha bustled around the kitchen, muttering to herself and Ross trying to steady her with sighs escaping him.
"Are you ready for the party tonight?" Benny asked him quietly, a smooth buzz against Ethan's entire body, and for a moment nothing else mattered but the low alto of his voice and the smile hiding behind it.
But then Ethan actually heard and took in what he had said, and just like that he was as taut as a bowstring again, spine stiffening beneath Benny's warm hands.
"Oh shit," Ethan moaned, and his forehead found home on his boyfriend's shoulder. "I almost stopped sweating over it."
"Hey, hey,"
Benny's hand found Ethan's cheek and he cupped it lightly, long fingers fanning out over the flushed skin, and suddenly Ethan was looking at brown instead of the black of his eyelids.
Benny's entire body was soft with assurance. "We don't have to do this, E. I'm totally and one hundred percent serious and honest when I say that- if it's really freaking you out this much, maybe we should wait."
Ethan's face pinched dangerously. "Wait for what, Benny? Until we're sure? I'm more sure than Jim Kirk is a reckless idiot that I'm going to love you until the day I die. I just..."
His mouth clamped shut as images and horrible thoughts washed over him, and Benny had to fight the urge to swoon at what the smaller boy had just said in order to comfort him.
So he squeezed Ethan's neck where it met the nape of his hair, and he smiled sunnily. "I get it, dude- you're scared that no one will accept us. That's how I was with Grandma. But she just knew, I guess, probably because she's as smart as a goddamn fox when it comes to magic and life in general. Your family is going to love you no matter what, E. And if they don't- then too fucking bad for them."
Ethan just nodded and swallowed back the golf ball in his throat, cuddling up to Benny without being terribly obvious. Ross and Samantha knew that the two were together and had no problem with it, but Ethan was just worried about them- what if they were shunned too because Ethan was with Benny and not a girl like Sarah?
All he wanted for Christmas that year was to sink right into the ground and never come out.
"Alright, let's head out." Samantha said finally, clicking her way back out to the foyer. Ethan's panic flared up even more but it calmed slightly when confusion came out instead. Ross had also put on a different sweater, his a mellow olive color, and Ethan wondered if Samantha would have a cow over his own missing sweater.
But then Jane came bounding down the stairs in a sweater that was a nice, pale blue color, and Ethan had to fight back a laugh.
Samantha looked at her family and sighed.
"I'm unsure why I do anything nice for you guys."
Ross said, "I think letting us change the sweaters was nicer than buying us those other ones, Sam."
Ethan and Benny were red in the face from fighting back a round of howls.
~.~.~
Upon arriving at Annie and Joe's large house, which was made of dark stone but full of lights and warmth, Ethan felt like he was going to pass out and die. But instead of doing just that, he took a breath and thought of things that made him happy as the five of them walked up the drive; Benny wearing nothing but a pair of Batman boxers was his favorite thing.
Annie and Joe greeted them at once after they rung the doorbell, and the familiar smell of cooking food wafting out behind her soothed Ethan, surprisingly.
A round of hugs and 'I've been great, you?'s later and Ethan and Benny were being pelted with kids at once, all ranging from three to ten. There was a rainbow of brunettes, blondes, redheads and onyxes flying at them and Ethan wondered how his family members managed to procreate so many offsprings.
"Ethan!" a little blonde girl named Kaylie cried, and she pawed at Ethan's sweater until he picked her up to hug her."
"Hi." he said and laughed genuinely in what felt like the first time in years.
In reality it had only been since that morning.
"I'm so glad you brought Benny with you! Is he going to do more magic tricks?"
At Kaylie's eager, gap-toothed grin, Ethan remembered why he mainly loved family gatherings- Benny always did a little magic and got away with it spectacularly because the grown-ups always assumed the kids were exaggerating. Many a time he had listened to his younger cousins fawning to their parents about something flashy Benny had done and they would laugh in the way parents do when their kid is being childishly naive, pat them on the head, and tell Benny that he was very good with slights of hand. Benny would shoot Ethan a secret grin and thank whoever was condescending him with a gleam in his eyes.
Ethan laughed and looked to Benny with raised eyebrows.
Benny grinned back. "I sure will- I've got some new things up my sleeves this year!"
The kids cheered and when Kaylie got down, she and another girl named Iris pulled on their sweaters to direct them towards the basement, chattering excitedly as the others scampered on ahead. On the way down the steps, which were furnished nicely for sliding down if one remembered to avoid the pool table at the end, Benny leaned over to whisper in Ethan's ear.
"Dude, we need to get some of these after college- they're adorable."
Ethan almost tripped down the stairs because holy Jesus Benny wanted to adopt some kids with him when they got older wow crap that's absolutely wonderful.
He didn't say that out loud, of course.
"Right?" he replied, and he went with it anyways even though he knew Benny could see right through him to his dancing soul.
Ethan sat down on the couch in the center of the furnished basement and on piled the kids, cuddling up to him and yelling excitedly about Benny's infamous magic tricks. Ethan smiled at his boyfriend as the gangly teenager losened up his arms and cracked the knuckles on his hands for show, and he knew that he seriously wouldn't ever love someone as much as the dork trying to look superficial, standing right in front of him.
Benny raised his hands to call for silence, and even though Ethan knew what he was going to do next, his breath was still lost in the wonderment of seeing something supernatural happen.
Benny took a moment to recite a spell inside of his head and when he opened up his hand, there was a tiny ball of blue fire floating just above his palm. He looked up at Ethan, winked, and when he blew the ball made a trail of cobalt as it soared up, up, up- and then exploded into a cloud of snowflakes. The kids and Ethan cheered wildly and Benny bowed with elegance.
~.~.~
A while later, after Benny had run out of safe spells to woo the kids (and Ethan) with, they'd thanked him with many toothy smiles and hugs. Now they were all running around and rolling balls down the pool table and making lego swords.
Benny sat at the rather randomly placed breakfast bar, on a stool, chin in his rised hand, and he watched as Ethan tried to show some of the kids how to acutally play pool with a stick and chalk and everything. His heart was soaring at the sight, and he meant what he'd said earlier on the stairs tenfold that very moment- they were having kids, tons of them, and they would be so kickass that no one would know what to say. They would only be able to stare as Ethan and Benny bursted through many a door, the Morgan-Weir children storming along next to them.
He sighed.
Moments later, a child popped up onto the stool next to him, and when he turned, the first thing he took in was her candy pink glasses. They were circular and made her face look even more sunny than it normally was. She had one front tooth missing, her long brown hair was in a braid, and her dark eyes studied Benny curiously through her specs.
It was Connie, Ethan's cousin Piper's youngest daughter, and Benny's favorite child out of the entire Morgan/Tanner family.
"Conn-ayy!" Benny cried, and they embraced right there at the breakfast bar. Connie tucked her small arms around Benny's neck and held on tight, and he realized how much he'd missed her since the family reunion in the summer only four months beforehand.
"I saw you staring at Ethan," she mumbled into his shoulder. When she pulled away, Benny saw the intelligent eight year old look at him with a child's wit. "You're in love with him, aren't you?"
Benny looked at her for a moment, and then looked over at Ethan. A black-haired kid named Gared was holding a pool stick in his small hands, and with his tongue wagging out like a dog's, he closed an eye and shot at the white cue ball just a foot off of the wall of the table. It cracked right down the middle of the triangle and sent the 2 and the 7 into a pocket each. Gared cheered and Ethan laughed, and when he looked up at Benny, the other could see the light reaching up into his eyes and the brown soaking it up like a friggin' Sham Wow. Ethan radiated happiness.
"Yeah," Benny said quietly, and he looked back down at Connie. "I'm so in love with Ethan that it hurts sometimes, Con."
Her smokey eyebrows furrowed. "That doesn't really make sense, Benny."
"It will someday, kid."
~.~.~
Ethan felt as though he were going to faint, right there in the middle of Annie's living room.
Him and Benny had finally emerged from entertaining the kids when cousin Rachel arrived with her face painting kit, and were now seated on the large sectional with cups of coffee in their hands and family members scattered around on either side of them.
It was nearing time to leave for home and Ethan still hadn't plucked up his courage to tell his family that he was totally head over heels in love with his best friend who happened to be a dude, and would never be in love with anyone else, man or woman.
Ethan was desperate to curl up to Benny and hide in his chest, his arms, his entire being, but he knew that that would just make it harder to spit out what he'd been wanting to say since Benny had kissed him a year ago at the summer party up at Vicky's, underneath her raft in the deep, navy lake rightfully named Blue Moon. It was the Fourth of July and Benny had kissed him during the fireworks and it had been absolutely perfect.
His hand started shaking around his coffee cup, filled a quarter of the way with the most incredible tasting peppermint coffee creamer ever invented, and Benny noticed this at once.
Looking around in nonchalance, Benny saw that no one was regarding them suspiciously, and so he moved his hand to rest against Ethan's hip. His loose fist uncurled to fit around his boyfriend's hip, and Ethan's hand stop shaking as the smaller boy looked over at him. Benny saw the raw panic in his eyes and he softened.
"Ethan, we seriously don't have to do this. It can wait." Benny said with certainty. "You're going to make yourself sick, babe."
At the sound of the rare but much needed endearment, Ethan closed his eyes and all but fell against Benny, trying to get his heart rate under control.
"I do want to do this, Ben, but I just don't know how." he replied in a small voice.
Benny bit his lip and just gave Ethan's hip a squeeze.
They sat there, like that, for around twenty more minutes as Ethan tried to work out what to do in his racing brain and Benny right there with him, trying to think of anything that would make the whole process less painful for Ethan. He didn't want to admit it to himself, but Benny really did want the family to accept them, because he loved the Morgans and the Tanners and the in between names no one remembered and all of those people the family adopted and brought in simply because they were friends of the family. They were the family he never had, Grandma being the only one there with him, and if he lost them it would crush his entire heart.
He looked around at the entire family, those who weren't milling in the kitchen or downstairs entertaining the children, sitting in Annie's livingroom, smiling gently and laughing with each other, and he knew deep in his bones that they would all accept them with open arms.
And when the first chords of White Christmas started playing out, warming the dim room even more than the roaring fire, Benny's thick brain worked like Ethan's always did in the moments of panic.
Without really knowing what he was doing, Benny stood up and set his coffee down, before taking Ethan's own coffee from him and replacing the cup with his hand.
"Ben, what are you-"
"Just go with it," Benny whispered, and pulling Ethan gently to his feet, he lead them to the center of the spacious living room, just in front of the fire, and he pulled Ethan close. He felt the shorter gasp against him, but instead of giving into the painful squirming in his stomach, Benny just put Ethan's hand on his shoulder, took the other in his own hand, and began to sway with him to the sound of Bing Crosby's deep baritone voice.
Ethan wasn't sure what to do with himself; he felt incredibly awkward but comfortable at the same time, and the fire was hot but he felt cold with fright at the feeling of eyes on his back, and his tongue felt like lead and the only thing holding back the bile in his stomach.
But Benny's hold on his hand and his side was familiar, and warm, and suddenly all the calm Benny was conserving slowly began to creep into him through their contact.
When the song changed from Bing Crosby to the higher octave choir repeating his words back to him, the older began to turn them around so that Benny's back was to his family, and Ethan was peering over his sweater-clad shoulder with only his eyes, his nose buried into the soft fabric and his hand clenched into a fist.
But what he saw made his entire brain go blank- everyone was smiling sweetly at them, and no where Ethan looked did he see a pair of cold eyes or a frown, and suddenly his entire body was filled with a balmy sort of euphoria. His panic melted away, and his grip on Benny's sweater slackened, and he lifted his face out of his boyfriend's shoulder to tilt his head against the other's.
"You were right." Ethan whispered to him, and Benny shivered with both victory at the words and excitement at the warm breath on his neck. "God, I'm such an idiot- of course my family wouldn't hate me."
"Ethan," Benny said slowly.
"Yes?"
Benny turned them so that he was looking out into the sea of grinning mouths and knowingly warm eyes, and he grinned back into Ethan's wild hair.
"I love you. And also, you're an idiot."
Ethan laughed quietly and when Benny felt the light shake against his chest, his heart ballooned and almost exploded everywhere around Annie's livingroom.
"I love you too, jackass."
Benny hummed and they twirled as slowly as they could, unwilling to give up their moment together full of warmth and relief.
"Hey." Ethan said suddenly, as if he just had a great idea. Benny was already worried.
"Yeah?"
Ethan pulled his head away to look at Benny, and he saw the laugh he was repressing glittering in his eyes.
"Can I have a dance for Christmas?"
"But we're already-"
"Not that kind of dance, Benny." Ethan's voice dropped, and though he meant to turn Benny on, the taller of the two just snorted and pushed Ethan's sultry face away.
"If you ever talk about something like that again during a family function I will literally never have sex with you again."
Ethan just laughed back at him. "Why?"
"I'll think only of your entire family watching us getting it on. I don't do audiences."
"I know you've always had a thing for my cousin Jack."
"Ethan. Stop talking."
~.~.~
A/N: Welp, there you go guys :D I hope this made your Christmas better than mine, because my power got knocked out by an ice storm and all of my plans got shot to hell. So I'm writing this from my mom's boyfriend's house and I'm trying to hide the fact that I'm writing slash from them because they're not really pro-gay woops oh well I like dick on dick and I cannot lie.
Merry Christmas and other holidays and a happy New Years!
PS: New Years is a holiday, and well, I like writing holiday fics for these two ;D Also that one will be a hundred times better so yeah please excuse this shit