Chapter 5 - Sick (Posted 10 August 2011)

Ethan woke to a strange sensation. Something was pressed up against his back and hugging him tightly around his midsection. He could feel a warm air being blown onto his neck every few seconds. At the first realization that this was not how he usually awoke, he became slightly startled. But in the passing moments of his groggy awakeness, he realized it was one of the most comforting things he's ever felt. Whatever was encircling him was warm and soft and made him feel safe and protected.

But then he remembered. Benny. He was being cuddled by his best friend who also happened to have feelings for him. The sense of alarm returned, but as the panic set in, he also felt waves of calmness wash through him. It was so confusing. He knew doing something like this with Benny was wrong. Not just because he wasn't gay, but because he didn't want to give Benny any false hope. As much as Ethan did care about him, and even though he would admit to feeling some kind of attachment to him, he didn't feel that way. But at the same time it just felt so nice to just lay there and feel safe. Even if if was just because of that stupid link, Benny made him feel good. And his touch made him feel even better. So being held by him like this was so nice he didn't want him to ever let go.

As he went on pondering the situation, mentally weighing the pros and cons of staying wrapped up in Benny's arms, he felt another warm gust of air graze his neck, sending chills throughout his body and causing his skin to sprout thousands of tiny goosebumps.

That's when he decided to get up. He lifted his arms and gently unlocked Benny's from their tight grasp around him. Then he sat up slowly, peeling his body away from Benny's and turning around to look at his sleeping friend. He put a hand on Benny's arm and watched him as he thought. He still wasn't crazy about having to bite him. Even before he became a vampire, he knew that if he was ever turned he would never want to drink human blood even if it killed him. But it wasn't just his life in danger. Benny was going to die too if he wasn't changed. By Ethan. It was all just so much. Being bitten in the first place was traumatic enough. Then finding out that Benny was in love with him only complicated things further. And now to top it all off, he was going to have to turn his best friend into a vampire.

He didn't want to deal with it. He didn't want any of this. He knew he talked a big game, trying to be so accepting of everything. Whatever happens happens, right? You can't change the past and all that. But he just wished he could undo it all. He did accept that he was a vampire now. And he accepted Benny's feelings and he accepted this psychic link situation. But that didn't mean he wanted it.

All he wanted was to go to school like a normal kid. Hang out with Benny all the time. And just live his life without having to worry about saving the world anymore.

Unfortunately that wasn't how it worked. This was his life now. And whether he wanted it or not, he figured he just had to make the best of it.

Suddenly the urge to use the bathroom came over him. He let go of Benny and stood up. He took one step, only to fall to his knees with a loud thud and a soft yell.

Benny's eyes opened at the sound and he sat up. "Ethan?" His tired eyes darted around the room until he spotted him kneeling on the floor, panting with his arms around himself. "Ethan, are you ok?" he asked worriedly. He quickly sat up and scurried over to him, placing a hand on Ethan's forearm.

Finally Ethan caught his breath and his body relaxed. "Woah." Ethan's voice was quiet and shaky.

"Ethan? What happened?"

Ethan looked up at him. "I... I don't know. All I did was stand up and start walking toward the bathroom and I felt this like... weight pulling me down. And I felt like I was... drowning, but that burning in my throat was back and I just couldn't keep my balance. It felt like I was gonna die."

Benny pursed his lip. "It's getting worse."

"Mmm..." Ethan said as he caught a whiff of a familiar scent. "That smell..."

"Much worse..." Benny slightly pushed Ethan away from him but didn't stop touching him. "Ethan, I'm going to let go for just a second, ok?"

"What?" Ethan shook his head. "No, don't. It'll hurt." But then he smelled that smell again and inhaled deeply as he leaned closer to Benny. "Benny, you smell so good..."

"Ethan, snap out of it. We don't want to do this yet." Benny tried to reason with him. "You're thirsty, I know that, I'm just going to let go of you for a second so I can get you some blood substitute ok?"

"No, Benny, please don't let go..."

"I have to. Just trust me. Please, Ethan. It'll just be for a second. I'll get you the blood and once you drink it the pain won't be so bad. Trust me?"

Ethan closed his eyes and tried to clear his head. "Just for a second?"

"Just one tiny second, I promise."

Ethan nodded. "Ok."

Benny let go of Ethan and felt a strong pang of guilt as he heard him fall all the way to the floor and start breathing heavily again. He rushed over to the cooler, which had been enchanted to keep the contents cold, and retrieved a bottle of his grandmother's blood substitute. Then he hurried back over to Ethan and opened the bottle before handing it to him.

Ethan drank the salty liquid as he felt Benny's hand on his arm again. Between the two things, he began feeling better. The burning subsided and he was able to breathe. His body returned to its normal weight as he swallowed the last few sips from the bottle.

"Did that help?" Benny asked.

"Yeah. Thanks."

"Don't worry about it. I was just scared for a minute."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. It's not-"

"Not my fault?" Ethan interrupted with a raised eyebrow. "Now you see where I'm coming from."

Benny's lips twitched into a tiny smile. "I guess I do."

"Benny, what are we going to do? We can't go to school like this."

"You're right." Benny agreed. "We can't."

"So what should we do?"

"I don't know. I'm sure if I tell Gramma what's going on she'd write me a sick note. But you can't just walk up to your parents and tell them the reason you need to stay home. Can you fake sick?"

"No." Ethan said flatly. "I'm horrible at faking sick. My parents can see right through it."

"Well..." Benny said, getting an idea. "Maybe... you don't have to fake it."

"What?"

"If you just lay in your bed and I don't touch you, I think you'll convince them."

"What? Are you crazy? Do you have any idea how much pain I'm in when you let go of me?"

"Yes, actually." Benny said sternly, surprising Ethan. "But it won't be as bad now that you drank some blood. It will only be a little uncomfortable. And you just have to do it long enough for your parents to say you can stay home. Then they'll go to work and I'll come out of wherever I'm hiding."

"I don't like it."

"It's the best we've got right now."

"But..."

"Ethan," Benny took a deep breath, "do you want to go to school and have to spend every second touching me?"

"Well... I... you make having to touch you sound like a prison sentence."

"I just know you don't like it and you don't want to do it in public. So you have to stay home. And our only option is doing this so your parents think you're sick."

What was this tightness in the pit of Ethan's stomach? He almost thought it was guilt, only he didn't know what he was feeling guilty about. "Benny, it's not that I hate touching you, I just..."

"You don't want people to think you're gay and you don't want to give me the wrong idea. I know. I get it." Benny smiled. "But Ethan, your parents are going to come up here any minute and expect you to be ready for school. And we don't have all our classes together, so if we go you're going to have to tough it out on your own during those periods."

Then, as if to prove Benny's point, there was a knock on Ethan's door. "Ethan," it was his mother, "I'm leaving for work. Do you and Benny want a ride to school?"

Ethan looked at Benny, unsure of what to do.

"Come on." Benny whispered and dragged Ethan over to his bed. "Just lay down. I'll get under the bed. Tell her I left already." Then Benny proceeded to get down on the floor and crawl beneath Ethan's bed.

"Ethan?" his mother called again.

"Come in." Ethan yelled, his voice a little strained.

His bedroom door swung open and his mother walked in, eyeing him worriedly. "Sweetie, you don't sound so good."

Ethan's face was covered in sweat and entire body felt like it weighted a thousand pounds. His head was pounding and breathing wasn't so easy. "I don't feel so good either."

His mother put her hand on his forehead and nodded. "Yep, you definitely have a fever. Maybe you should stay home today."

"But, Mom," Ethan pretended to argue, "I have a science lab today and-"

"No." She said, standing straight. "Science lab or not, you need to rest. Your father and I are off to work but if you need one of us, please call and we'll come right home, ok?"

"Ok." Ethan nodded shallowly.

"I'll call once in a while to check on you."

"Alright. Thanks."

She smiled at him and then looked around. "Is Benny here?"

"Oh, no he left already."

"He left? Without you?"

"Yeah, well... he... um... he had to go home and change first because he forgot extra clothes."

"Huh." his mother said, a little confused. "But I didn't see him leave..."

"He probably didn't want to disturb you and Dad."

"Does he know you're sick? I wonder if he caught it too. You know you two always seem to get sick at the same time. It's the strangest thing, really. In fact, I don't really remember there ever being a time when one of you was sick and the other wasn't... even when we spent that week at the shore, you got food poisoning and when we came back, Benny had the same symptoms..."

"Yeah, Mom, that was weird. Aren't you gonna be late for work?"

"Right. I gotta go. You'll be ok, right? There's soup and things downstairs. And if Benny is sick you might as well invite him over so you don't have to stay here all by yourself. Maybe his grandmother could even come over and stay with you for a little bit."

"...Sure." Ethan said.

"Alright. I'll see you when I get home."

"Bye, Mom." he said as she walked out the door.

The boys waited until they heard the front door close and the cars start up. Then Benny came out from under the bed and sat next to Ethan. To Ethan's surprise, he didn't touch him right away. It was almost like he was afraid to.

"Why do you look like you're scared?"

"Hm?" Benny asked.

"Your face. You look... you just look scared."

"I'm not scared." Benny reached out and took hold of Ethan's hand. "Ethan, you're not the only one that feels the pain when we're not touching."

"Oh." Ethan sat up and looked into Benny's eyes. "That's right. I forgot. You haven't really been showing it though..."

"It's not as bad for me." Benny told him. "It's magnified for you because of your thirst."

"Oh." Ethan said again.

"Yeah. Here," he reached across Ethan to the other side of the bed and and dug around in his bag that was sitting on the floor. He pulled something out and handed it to Ethan. "Wear it."

"Benny, I'm not wearing the surgical mask. It looks ridiculous."

"It doesn't look ridiculous. It looks cute." Benny bit his lip after letting that slip and seeing Ethan blush nervously. "Um... besides, it'll help you deal with my scent."

"It's not that bad."

"Ethan, your condition is getting worse faster than I expected. I thought we'd have about a week... but with the way things are going, I'd say we have until the end of the day."

"What!"

"And that's only if you put the mask on. We may be able to live longer, but soon you're not going to be able to stand my smell anymore. And you can't be in a feral mindset when you bite me or else you'll take too much blood. You need to be focused, ok? And if you're forced to be around my smell until it's time to bite me..."

"Alright, I get it. Give me the dumb mask." Ethan snatched the mask out of Benny's hand and put it on. "Happy?" he asked with a slightly muffled voice.

Benny smiled, instantly curing Ethan's annoyance at him. "Yep."

Ethan rolled his eyes. "You'd better call your gramma and let her know what's up."

"Oh yeah." Benny said. He grabbed his phone off the end table and called his gramma to tell her he was staying with Ethan. She told him she'd figured as much and would write him a note. "It's all taken care of." he said to Ethan.

"Good."

"And I've got an idea."

"Idea for what?"

"Well," Benny started, "when your parents get home, they're probably going to want to take care of you."

"Oh yeah..."

"So I think we should get Sarah to come over. She's a full vampire now, so she should be able to put them in a trance."

"What?" Ethan didn't like the sound of that. "No, we can't put my parents in a trance."

"Dude, she's not going to hurt them. It'll be better. Unless you want to tell them everything that's going on."

"Well no, I don't want to do that either... But I don't want to do something like that without their permission, you know?"

"Yeah. But... I mean this is totally up to you. If you want to tell them..."

"No, telling them would be way worse. Fine, we'll ask Sarah to put them in a trance."

"What about Jane?"

Ethan closed his eyes in thought. "Her too. I don't want her to know what's going on yet. Maybe after it's all over, we can tell her since she already knows pretty much everything else anyway."

"True."

"Ok, so now that that's all out of the way... can we... talk?"

Benny arched his eyebrows. "We've been talking all morning."

"Benny, you know that's not what I mean."

"Well, so what if I do? Maybe I don't really want to talk about it."

"Please?"

Benny sighed. "Fine. But you start."

"But it's so hard to talk with this mask on." Ethan whined.

"You're the one that wanted to talk, so talk."

Ethan relented and sat back against his headboard. Benny followed and sat right next to him so they could have their arms touching without having to hold hands. "Will you tell me... um... when you started to... uh..."

"Love you?"

Ethan blushed and looked away. "Yeah." his voice cracked.

"Middle school."

"Middle school?"

"Yep. Sixth grade. The day we gave that presentation in Math class about what happens when you divide by zero."

Ethan chuckled. "I remember the looks on all the other students' faces. They had no idea what we were talking about."

"I think even the teacher looked a little blank."

"But that was probably because we were just sixth graders."

"Probably."

"But why that day?" Ethan asked with a quiet but curious voice.

"Because." Benny started focusing on picking his fingernails. "After that presentation we had lunch. And we were sitting at our usual table when these two eighth graders came over and started making fun of us."

Ethan's eyes widened slightly. "Oh yeah, I kind of remember that..."

"And you know I've always been really protective of you. But even though I was bigger than you, I was still smaller than those guys, so I thought it would be safer if we just took our lunches somewhere else. So we grabbed our trays and started to walk away but then they ran in front of us and knocked our trays out of our hands. Then they both started saying things again, calling us names and stuff. That, I could handle. But back then, that kind of stuff really got to you, and I wanted to get you out of there. So I grabbed your arm and tried to run away but of course they caught us, they were like three times our size. The one held me back while the other pinned you to the ground and he pulled his fist back like he was going to hit you and I just lost it. I still don't even know what happened next. One minute I'm raging over you being hurt and the next both the bullies were on the floor."

"You beat them up for me?"

"Yeah. And I saw you on the ground and you looked like you were about to cry. And I couldn't just let you cry in front of everyone. So I pulled you up and I was about to take you into the bathroom or something when the principal found us."

"Did you get in trouble?"

"No. Apparently nobody would tell the principal what happened. And the bullies certainly weren't going to admit they were beat up by a sixth grade nerd. So he just took us to his office and called my gramma. And while he was on the phone... you just... you hugged me. And you started to cry. And not just a little bit either, I mean my entire shirt was soaked by the time Gramma picked us up. And you didn't stop crying until we got back to my house. We sat on the sofa for the rest of the day until your Mom came to get you and you just wouldn't let go of me. You even fell asleep after a few minutes." A fond smile stretched across Benny's lips as he played the memories back in his head. "I can still remember what it felt like to hold you like that. To know that I protected you and that I was comforting you. And I remember... I remember just being so grateful that you were okay and... that was when I realized that something was... different."

"Wow."

"I know, it's a lot to take in and you're probably upset,-"

"Upset?" Ethan asked quietly. "Why would I be upset?"

"I don't know. I just thought-"

"Thank you." Ethan interrupted again and put his arms around Benny's midsection.

Benny threw his arms in the air, not sure what to do. "For what?"

"For saving me."

Benny laughed a little as he hugged Ethan back. "That was years ago."

"I know. But still. Thanks. And Benny?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm not upset about it."

"Okay."

"And I'm really happy you told me."

"You are?"

"I am."

"Why?"

"Because I know it was a hard thing to deal with. I know it was hard to say and you were worried about it but you trusted me and chose to be honest with me. That's what makes us such good friends and keeps us together. Not the link. The link just feeds off the connection we've had since the day we met. You're my best friend. And you always will be."

"Good." was all Benny could think to say.