Side Note : Another one, so soon? Weeew :D I would say I'm getting better at this but trust me when I say that if I wasn't on a deadline this probably wouldn't come out for like three weeks because my writing muse tends to hop around to different fandoms. But, alas, here's chapter seven! Thank for the reviews and all of the lovely things said in the last chapter! I love you guys, and you know what, party at my house! We can be antisocial nerds together.

Just a warning: this chapter will have large amount of shitty cliche-ness, and I'm sure you'll know what I mean when the two boys run into the Trickster. Sorry if it was uber stupid and predictable, but gOD I NEED SOME BETHAN FLUFFIES.

xXxXxXx

Knowing that the single thing they were hunting was no more than a set of stairs away was making Ethan light-headed, and having to push through the throng of students to reach the other three was doing nothing to help. He felt woozy and sick with fear, but at the same time his heart rate picked up and his adrenaline soared, because he was ready to destroy this son of a bitch once and for all.

He held onto Benny's hand as tightly as he could without hurting his boyfriend as they wormed their way over to the vampires, and Benny gripped back just as tight to ensure that he wouldn't get sucked into the mass of people doing the Time Warp.

"Sarah!" Benny shouted. "Erica!"

The two girls dancing together looked up at them with goofy grins on their faces, Sarah's sunglasses on top of her head and Erica's top hat slightly askew. Ethan hated to break up the fun they were having already.

"What's up?" Sarah shouted back with a small laugh.

Benny used his phaser to gesture wildly at the staircase, and when Sarah saw Olivia screaming and crying hysterically, her grin dropped away at once.

She looked at Ethan and Benny, who had managed to finally get out of the cluster of monsters and fictional characters gyrating against each other and screaming along with the song playing.

"Is it here?" she asked them, and Benny nodded back grimly.

Erica sneered at the top floor as the shadow of the Headless Horseman slowly melted away into nothingness, and her grip on the glittering cane tightened. "Let's gut this thing."

Benny nodded in agreement and went over to drag Rory away from his friend, who looked a little remorseful but otherwise absolutely chill. But it was hard to tell from the orange glass obscuring his face.

"Dude, we've got to go!" Benny countered as Rory protested. "It's here!"

"But we just got into a discussion on Zelda-"

"Rory, this one time only, just this one time-" Benny shouted back, and if there wasn't a possibility that they were all going to die that night, Ethan would have laughed. "I need you to focus and cooperate. When we gank this damn Trickster, you can go back to talking with Boy Wonder, okay? We've got shit to do first."

Ethan drug his eyes away from the rather humorous sight to look at Sarah. "Sarah, how many room are there upstairs?"

"Uh, four." she calculated. "My room, my parents' room, the guest room and the bathroom."

"Alright, well there are still a bunch of rooms down here to look through." Ethan scanned the room with his eyes, though it was hard to distinguish anything through the lights and crowds of people. "You, Erica and Benny stay down here. Me and Rory will go upstairs and see if the Trickster's still up there."

"Okay."

She hurried over to where Benny and Rory were still going at each other's throats and pulled them away from each other, telling them the plan and looking for confirmation. When she got it, she sent Ethan a thumbs up and the pool of worry in Ethan's stomach tightened.

Rory moved over to him and they held onto their stakes tightly as they ran up the staircase together, already looking down the darkened hallway.

"I'll check out Sarah's room and the guest room." Ethan told Rory, who nodded. "You get her parents' room and the bathroom. Check the closets, too."

They separated with matching looks of worry and conflicting bravery, and although Ethan remembered how much he hated the darkness, he sucked in a breath and straightened himself out as he made his way down the dark hallway.

The room that belonged to Sarah was very distinguished, with a beautiful decal on the white painting of the door. It was black with hints of purple and blue, and reminded Ethan of the incense the store at the mall burned.

Opening the door, he turned the light on at once and blinked at the harsh contrast from being in the dark for nearly an hour.

Sarah's room was what Ethan expected it to be- warm, with posters on the wall, a fluffy bedspread, and lots of essentials like perfume and nail polish and lotion sitting around. It was a place that Ethan could see Sarah occupying, studying or listening to her iPod or chilling out with Erica.

But, sadly, there was no Trickster lurking, even when Ethan looked in her closet and under the bed.

Shutting the light off and creeping down the hallway, Ethan was sucked back into complete darkness again and he felt as though he were in every single cliche horror movie he'd seen. He was the idiotic main character, creeping his way down to his impending doom, and there was an audience waiting just beyond a screen, yelling at him to stop and go back.

He almost did turn back, his heart lurching up into his throat, but he remembered how many people would get hurt if he did. Instead of thinking about seeing Jigsaw or Jason Voorhees, Ethan thought of how when he got home he and Benny were going to curl up together and watch movies. It kept him going.

The guest room was much the same when Ethan opened the door and flicked the light on. The bed was off to the side, covered in a lovely white blanket with a rose in the very middle, and there was a lone dresser off against the other wall.

But unlike Sarah's room, there was somebody else in the room with Ethan. He couldn't see their face, or much of them at all for that matter, but the shirt they were wearing was terribly familiar and Ethan felt a sense of deja vu fill him from the inside out.

He must have let out a noise, because suddenly the person in the middle of the room stirred, and with a groan they stumbled to their feet and turned around to face them.

It was Benny, but he was no longer wearing his Spock costume. Instead, he had on a deep green polo with black stripes and a pair of his old blue jeans. The only thing unusual about him was the fact that the skin on his face was peeling off, and his white lips were covered in blood.

He was a zombiefied version of himself, looking exactly as he had back in freshman year when the Lotta Latte had gone horribly, horribly bad.

Ethan's breath quickened as he stumbled back in an attempt to get away from this terrifying version of his best friend, but he miscalculated and ended up against the wall, so Ethan remained pinned as Benny's clone crept closer. The warmth had gone from his brown eyes and was replaced by the coldness death brought upon someone, but the pupils were starting to cloud over from lack of nutrients. They seemed to both stare right through Ethan and not look at him at all, and it was so uncanny that the junior thought he was going to being hyperventilating.

"Oh god, Ben." he choked up, wetting his lips. "What happened to you?"

He knew exactly what had happened, because he'd been having nightmares about this exact situation since it had happened. Ever since Benny had been bitten, the nagging possibility that someday Ethan wouldn't be able to save him had pressed in on him like collapsing walls. That one time there wouldn't be a cure to the supernatural thing eating Benny up and that one day Ethan would have to kill Benny to make sure he didn't come back and hurt someone else.

Because that would just be the cherry on top of the chocolate sundae that was their lives- Benny dying from the things they'd killed countless times. It would be horribly ironic and Benny's last words would probably be used pointing out the dark humor in what had happened.

The zombie version of Benny was looking at him almost curiously, his head tilted on an angle and mouth slightly open. His hand reached up to touch Ethan's face, and he was cold to the touch, as though made of clay found deep in the earth. It stopped Ethan's heart all together because one of his favorite things about Benny was the fact that his best friend was basically a walking furnace, and sometimes his warmth was the only thing that kept Ethan sane in their whirlwind of lives.

"I'm so sorry." Ethan whispered, and Benny's head just tilted even more so as he studied Ethan. The shorter of the two had forgotten all about the mission at hand, too wrapped up in his worst nightmare being portrayed right in front of him to remember that there was something more important he needed to do besides crying.

They stared at each other, Ethan's eyes watery and mouth a thin line of remorse, and Benny remained curious with his head tilted like an owl's and his eyes resembling Count Chocula cereal.

But then Benny let out a kind of hissing sound, the kind cats made when seeing something they hated, and he bared his rotting teeth at Ethan menacingly. Ethan knew what came next, knew that Benny would go right for his throat, and though he killed Benny every single time in the dream before he did, Ethan couldn't move this time around.

That was when the door slammed open and with a shout, Ethan watched as Rory's blonde hair streaked in like a firecracker and yanked Benny's doppelganger away from a cringing Ethan. Benny's hackles rose and he hissed back at Rory, who looked just as frightened at the sight of one of his friends transformed into a flesh eating beast.

Shaken out of his stupor, Ethan scrambled for his staff and just managed to get the top off when Rory shouted out in surprise. Benny was shaking violently, the shell of his copy crumbling away, and the two backed away as the zombie melted back to reveal a girl with smokey black eyes and long hair that fell down her back like black paint.

It was Monica, from Ethan's Psychology class.

"I knew it was you." he shook out, swallowing away the nausea rising in his throat.

Monica laughed sarcastically. "Well, you two yahoos seem to be more brain than brawn. I'm shocked, honestly."

She fixed them both with her piercing onyx stare, and it was as though spiders were crawling around inside of Ethan's stomach.

"Too bad not everyone knows what's coming for them." Her grin was a pearly white color, so much that they almost glowed green in contrast to her dark assets. "Shame, because I'd expect more from your Vulcan crew members."

One second she was solid, and the next Ethan watched as Monica exploded into a cloud of smoke and slithered her way down the furnace leading from the guest room to the downstairs.

"God, she's going after Benny next!" Rory shouted, and they almost tripped over each other in their haste to get back downstairs and find the other three.

xXxXxXx

Benny had almost forgotten how much he hated basements until it was his job to go into Sarah's and look for the Trickster.

Everything was both too loud and too quiet, with there being no sound and then the creaking of the ceiling and then the popping of the dryer and washer. He had the lights on, though they were only naked bulbs hanging down from the beams up above, and still there were too many shadows for him to relax to his best.

When looking around the space cluttered up by nothing than a few boxes, Benny saw nothing and no one else; the main area of the basement was clear, and that alone should have put him at some form of ease.

But there were also other rooms in the labyrinth of the basement, and something told him that if he went looking around in them, he wouldn't like what he found. But he went anyways, just to say he had, and he crossed his fingers for luck around the handle of his stake/phaser.

The first extra room was just a bathroom with nothing more than a toilet and a sink, but the ominous stains on the tile flooring made his skin crawl. There was a single bulb screwed in above the mirror that made his face look even paler than it normally did, and washed out his skin, and he felt as though if he looked too long he would become translucent and disappear all together.

The other room was boarded off by two walls of wood and a small door, and when Benny opened it up, he was surprised to see that it was full of toys. It had obviously been Sarah's old playroom, full to the brim still with Barbies and dresses made for five year olds and other Disney related things. A small TV set sat on top of a dresser, a VCR on one side and a DVD player on the other, and Benny knew that if he opened the top drawer it would be filled with nothing but children's movies.

But there was something out of place in the room, besides the phantom images of a younger Sarah playing with her toys and watching George of the Jungle.

Ethan stood in the center of the room, surrounded by stuffed animals and giant blocks and all sorts of glittering accessories. He looked incredibly small in the middle of the large room, wearing dark clothes that brightened the pink, and his frown made the dolls look that much happier.

And then Benny noticed that Ethan was crying, with fat, hot tears rolling down his red cheeks, and the older's spine stiffened because he knew exactly what was happening.

The Trickster had figured out his worst nightmare.

Ethan opened his mouth, but Benny already knew what he was going to say.

"I'm so cold, Benny." he whimpered. "I'm so alone, Benny. And so sad."

"Why?" he choked out. He didn't understand why he was playing into the fantasy, though, because he'd seen the scene more times than he'd had liked to. It was a recurring nightmare he had, starting up sometime in eighth grade when the two had gone climbing after watching Bridge to Terabithia, and Ethan had almost tumbled out of the tree they were in and to his death. Since then, the dream had escalated from Ethan accidentally falling and dying to the smaller brunette purposely hurting himself, and Benny being unable to stop him.

"I don't know why I'm even still here." He seemed not to have heard Benny's broken response, and swept away to a different spot in the room. The black in his clothes followed him like a rain cloud, and suddenly the bright children's toys looked incredibly out of place. "No one even cares about me."

"I care." Benny told him. "I care about you, Ethan."

"No one needs me." he sighed. "I don't belong here."

Benny's whole heart gave out when he saw the silver of the knife, and the light overhead reflecting off of it, and he gulped around for words like a fish out of water. So many times he had tried to stop this part of the dream from happening, to wake up or just pull the knife away and Ethan close, but he'd never been able to.

"Please just listen to me, Ethan." Benny wobbled closer to the other but the invisible wall that always popped up stopped him; it almost made him pause when Ethan was just out of reach of him. Of safety.

"It would all be much simpler," Ethan observed, as though talking about what he'd eaten for dinner that night, and Benny's eyes filled with tears when he finally pulled the knife out of his jacket pocket. "If I just ended it, wouldn't it? No one would have to pretend to care anymore."

"But I do care, Ethan." Benny said thickly. "I love you so much, Ethan."

Ethan looked at him, and smiled without any humor. "That's exactly what you would say to get me to stop, wouldn't you? I don't think you mean it."

Benny hiccuped on a sob. "I do mean it, though. Please, don't do this-"

"I'm so tired." The words left Ethan with a sigh, and he rolled the knife handle over in his fingers.

The blade flickered brightly, like a camera flash, as Ethan adjusted his grip on it, fingers whitening over the handle. And then he met Benny's eyes, and with a pain-filled grin full of hope and tragedy, he drove his hand forwards and Benny watched with a cry as the knife sank into Ethan's abdomen.

"Ethan!" The wall finally melted away and Benny fell to his knees in front of his boyfriend's double, eyes throbbing as they took in the blood pooling up from his chest and appearing in flecks along his lips.

Benny's lungs burned as he cradled Ethan's head in a large hand, while the other tried to stop the bleeding, but Benny knew from many times of trying that nothing he would do was going to save Ethan.

The dying teenager on the ground looked up at Benny through what was left of the light in his eyes, and when he smiled, his teeth were coated in blood.

"I'm happy, Benny. It's okay- I want to die."

"Please, stop." Benny sobbed. "Stop it, Ethan."

For a moment, Benny had forgotten that the person he was holding onto wasn't actually Ethan, but a Trickster who had constructed themselves to look like his dearest friend. So Benny wept as Ethan's body went cold, his phaser forgotten by the door, and all he could think about was the pain building up in his chest.

He was surprised, though, when the body underneath him began to move. It started to shake as his crying continued on and soon it was breaking apart like a crumbling statue. Benny scrambled away with a gasp, and went through all the memories of this nightmare- none of them had ended with Ethan performing a Professor Quirrell on him and collapsing into a pile of ash before his eyes.

When the shaking stopped, it was a pile of rubble that was before Benny, but a girl who was in his Algebra class who liked to use sarcasm a lot and reminded him of a night without the moon and stars in the sky.

"That was quite the performance." Monica grinned crookedly, clapping slowly. And for once in his lifetime, Benny was stunned silent. "Very touching."

The knife that had been in Monica's stomach moments before was now in her hand, and Benny realized all too late what had really just happened, and he cursed himself for forgetting about the Trickster ordeal.

"Let's see the real thing happen reversed, shall we?" she proposed, and Benny tried to scramble back through the blocks and Barbies as Monica advanced him.

There was a banging sound behind him and the smell of vanilla wafted under Benny's nose, and he knew at once who it was.

"I don't think so, bitch." Erica snarled at her, and if Monica had been anyone else she would have cowered away.

"You brought a friend." she looked down at Benny, her perfectly manicured eyebrows quirking upwards. "How nice."

That was when Rory and Sarah appeared behind her, Ethan trailing at Rory's elbow.

"Actually, he brought more than one." Rory replied with a smirk. He held up his key and broke off the end, revealing the large stake hidden in the shaft. "And we came prepared."

Now Monica did look nervous, but she was quick to cover it up with a laugh. "Hit me with your best shot."

Chaos erupted after that; two swirls of blonde and one of brown mixed together as Monica took on the three vampires, and Ethan circled around them, looking adorably determined though he couldn't distinguish the four from each other. Benny was still heaving on the ground, his heart racing a million miles an hour, and all he could do was stare at Ethan and yell at himself to get himself together, because Ethan was alive and right in front of him, dammit.

Rory was the first one out of the loop of battle, flying away from the dreidel-like scene in the middle of the playroom. He hit the wall of the house with a crunching thud and rolled onto his side, wincing with wide eyes. Sarah then followed as Monica got her with a vicious uppercut to the jaw, and she flew to the wall next to Rory's where a poster of Hannah Montana hung. Her glasses fell off and crunched beneath her head, and she lay panting on the ground, body limp and bruised.

"You three are the most pathetic group of vampires I've ever seen." Monica laughed, circling around with Erica opposite of her. "What's up? Not enough food?"

Erica swung at Monica, who dodged the hit easily, and it only deepened the blonde's scowl. "Sarah made me promise to lower the blood intake. Obviously, that's not happening again."

"You're like a cat." Monica snickered. "Feisty. Obedient."

"I bite, though." Erica promised, before lashing out again and getting Monica right in the chest. It was harsh enough to force Monica back a few steps, the breath wooshing out her with a gasp, and Benny thought for a millisecond that it was all over, and that they had won.

But then Monica regained her footing and growling at Erica, she struck out with tenfold the force and Erica was hurdled against the same wall as Rory. She was just as put out by the lashing and could only groan on the floor, looking hateful and in agony.

Monica eyed a still observing Ethan hungrily, as though he were some sort of treat, and that was most definitely not going to fly with Benny.

"You five are absolutely adorable." Monica told him, and Ethan grimaced at her. "You think you're all so mighty and powerful, but you forget that I'm a demigod."

Ethan's eyes narrowed. "You might be a demigod but you're still mortal, like us. A quick stab to the heart and you're done for."

Monica tilted her head. "Maybe. But I'm much harder to catch. You, on the other hand, remind me of a rabbit, and I'm the fox on your heels. I'm snapping at you right now, Ethan. You're so close to me that my mouth's watering."

This made Ethan look very uncomfortable, his face screwing up into a look of displeasure. "Um."

"You're that cute little cottontail," Monica was suddenly right before him, gripping his chin tightly in her manicured fingers, and when Benny saw the blood welling up underneath where her nails were cutting into his chin, he began to see red. "And you're losing speed fast, kiddo."

As Monica continued to taunt Ethan, he very silently maneuvered his way over to Sarah, who had only enough strength left to hand him her back-up stake inside of her jacket sleeve.

He got to his feet as Monica told Ethan he was tasty enough to make her dizzy, and as silently as he could, he tip toed his way through the mass of plastic and glitter.

Monica's eyes dug into Ethan's and they had a sort of staring contest with each other, neither of them willing to back down and each equally disgusted with the other.

"Humans." Monica snorted, and then shoved Ethan so hard that he hit the wall and cracked his head against the blue paint. "You're so pathetic, and manipulative."

"Actually, we're not humans." Benny said with satisfaction, and his grin grew as Monica turned to him with naked surprise. "I'm a warlock, honey, and Ethan's the male version of Jennifer Love Hewitt."

Monica didn't have time to even blink at Benny before he took the stake in his hands and shoved it through Monica's chest, the bone and flesh cracking beneath him bringing him a sort of grim pride in himself.

"You peaked at my Starfleet crew members, bitch."

Monica let out a final croak before collapsing onto the ground, and her body began to shake and crumble the same way all of her horrific creations had. Her head folded down onto her chest, then her legs bent up to her thighs, and the rest of her body followed until she was in a tight box. Then she exploded, the left over dust melting down into the carpet.

The five stared at the spot at Benny's feet for a moment, breathing heavily and aching all over. The shock of the whole thing finally being all over had rendered them silent, but words weren't needed. It was easy enough to just know that since they'd killed the Trickster, they'd never be speaking of it again.

Benny broke out of his thoughts when Ethan shifted against the wall and groaned, gasping when touching the back of his head.

"You okay, E?" Benny asked him gently, moving to rest his hand on Ethan's pale cheek.

Ethan looked up at him and smiled lightly, nodding. "Yeah. I think I'm gonna be just fine."

Benny laughed and pulled him into a strong embrace, and feeling Ethan thrumming with life against him was all he needed to be okay again. Ethan's arm curled around him and together they just stood there in the middle of Sarah's old playroom, already chasing the nightmares they'd seen away.

The vampires smiled at the two and helped each other up, wincing as their vampiric powers kicked in and began working to heal them.

"What do you say we go party some more?" Sarah suggested, Ethan and Benny looking up at her from their comfortable embrace.

Ethan grinned. "That sounds super."

xXxXxXx

That was a horrible ending .-. I am so sorry but my brain hurts. I promise to make Ethan and Benny super duper mushy and sickeningly sweet in the last chapter. also guess what comes next that's right implied sEXY TIMES YAY GAY SMUT. So I hope that the thought of Ethan and Benny basically making babies together will be enough to cover up for the monstrosity that this chapter was and here's also your favorite candy as an apology.

Last chapter's on Thursday guys I'm SAD WAH I've never finished a multi-chapter story before that's more than like three chapters so I'm super excited :D Until Thursday!