Work Text:
From his long lashes to his soft brown hair that curled around the tips of his ears Ethan Morgan was beautiful in an all american nerd type of way. The only problem was that he doesn’t realize it and it drives Benny insane. “What’s wrong, B?” Ethan takes a sip of his more-creamer-than-real-coffee iced coffee to punctuate his question. Ethan used to hate coffee. The small gesture drives him insane reminding Benny that they’ve changed from freshman year of high school to freshman year of college.
“Everything is wrong, E.”
“Like how?” Like i’m totally in love with you, but you have Sarah.
“You know when you realize something and no matter how much you want to deny it you can’t. Like stuff you google at two in the morning because your guard is lowered enough and it’s late enough that you feel that the answers you get aren’t real. Like you can wake up in the morning and what you searched the night before never happened?” Benny knows what he just said didn’t make sense, but he can’t say what he’s really feeling. Everytime he tries to form the correct sentence his tongue swells to twice the size.
“I get it. When I had a crush on Sarah i googled ‘how to know if you’ve fallen in love’. You know the only times people go on late night googling sessions they’re in love with someone who doesn’t love them or someone society says they shouldn’t love?” Ethan has gotten deep since high school. They both avoid eye contact.
“The second one.”
“Is it a certain guy or just in general?” Something about the fact that Ethan looks concerned is comforting to Benny.
“Kinda both. I’ve been trying to wade through my feelings since eighth grade, but I have developed a not so small crush.” Ethan’s grip on his drink tightens protectively.
“Who is it? Can I help you or do i need to beat him up?” That’s another difference from high school. Ethan has started working out and he’s ripped under his hoodie.(Not that Benny thinks about that fact constantly. Who are we kidding, he totally thinks about it constantly.)
“It’s no one.” Benny takes a bite from his once forgotten muffin and checks his phone. He doesn’t have the heart to tell Ethan that he’s missing Intro to Psychology right now. “I would think you’d be weirded out after all the times we’ve fallen asleep together.”
“We’re best friends. If you were a straight girl it’d be the same. Nothing sexual about it.”
Except you’re a total horn dog that could never innocently fall asleep beside a girl. At least I can keep it in my pants. Benny knew the words were mean and he’s instantly regretting just thinking about them let alone saying them. Instead he gives a calm, “And that’s why you’re my best friend.”
“Anything for you, bro, and I’ll love you through any stupid decision.” There’s a sudden breeze through the coffeeshop sending a chill down his spine.
“My favorite words to hear from a guy,” Benny jokes causing Ethan to lick his teeth to keep from laughing. “Love you too.”
***
Shit. Shit. Triple shit. I was going to tell him Sarah and i broke up, but woah. Benny’s confession was so shocking Ethan almost walked into traffic twice on his way back to his dorm. Now he’s sprawled out with his head hanging over the side of his bed wondering how he could have overlooked something so important about his best friend.
Then somehow his mind wanders to how the guy Benny likes doesn’t like him back. He’s smart, can cast spells,and those dimples. They’re almost as amazing as his forest green eyes so dark you could mistake them for black on first look.
Some unknown entity belly flops in the pit of his stomach causing it to churn uneasily. Ethan starts to think about what kind of guy Benny likes but he can’t do it for the life of himself. The only image that comes to mind is Benny and Ethan together. Like together together. He wonders what it would be like to wake up beside Benny and not having to get up to preserve his masculinity. He wonders what it would be like if their weekend brunches and daily coffee runs could last forever. Waking up at noon and ordering pizza so they can stay in bed all day doesn’t sound like a bad life.
Holy smokes. I’m in love with my best friend. The thought sends him into a panic attack over what to do. Confess my feelings and possibly get rejected making our friendship awkward or stay silent and come out to Benny when I’m a thousand percent sure I’m over him.
When he’s finally calmed down he looks over at the clock to see that it’s after ten. Is it late enough to avoid my feelings in the morning? Screw it. He grabs for his computer and leans back against the wall sideways on his bed so his roommate can’t see what he’s looking at if he decides to crash in their room for once. The one last precaution he takes is switching to incognito mode in case someone wants to borrow his laptop. He googles three simple words knotting his stomach up: Am I gay?
The first article is about compulsory heterosexuality. Somehow it doesn’t explain what he’s going through and the rest are busts because all they talk about is if it’s gay to watch gay porn. (According to Cosmopolitan it’s not.)
Ethan hopes his second search is more promising: Is it gay to be in love with your male best friend?
He finds an article about a guy who couldn’t figure out why he was getting jealous of his roommate’s boyfriend until he realized he was in love with his roommate. It’s closer to what Ethan is feeling but the guy sounds a little more dense than Ethan would like to believe he is.
Ethan tries one more search before he decides if he should call Sarah for advice: How Gay am I quiz.
The results are just as cheesy as he expects, but Ethan has never taken life seriously and now he won’t take his sexuality as a serious life changing event. With a deep breath he clicks on a link to Buzzfeed.
As he reads through the questions Ethan can’t deny his feelings for his best friend. The quiz tells him he’s not gay or straight, but bisexual, and honestly his life makes so much more sense than it did ten minutes ago.
He always loved the pressure of Benny’s arm slung around his hip while sleeping and how he never asked for no tomatoes on his burgers just so Ethan could eat them, but he also could never keep himself together when Sarah was nearby and he felt like it was their first date every time he took her out for the first year they were dating.
Yeah, it’s obvious.
***
When Benny rolls over in the morning he’s not expecting twenty-seven calls from Sarah and ten text messages. He does the nice thing of calling her back but just to get back at her he uses FaceTime. For some reason unknown to the universe she despises FaceTime. (For some reason vampires show up on iPhones proving a long held belief shared by Ethan and Benny that there’s something demonic about Apple.) “Looks like your finally returning my call.” Her lip is curled up in disgust at seeing Benny’s face.
“That I am. What did you need since if it was life or death you would have tried harder to contact me.” Her disgust deepens.
“I’m going to kill you so hard you’re going to be going about your life then poof you never existed. Thirty years from now they’ll ask where Benny is but no one will know because they don’t care enough to investigate.”
“Harsh, Sarah.” She bares her fangs illustrating that he should be scared. “So, why did you call me at one in the morning?”
“You’ve broken Ethan.”
“Don’t see how. We went out for coffee between classes and talked.” He doesn’t want to tell Sarah about their conversation. Something inside him doesn’t want to admit what he said. It’s already enough that he admitted it to Ethan.
“Tell me before I go through on my threat.”
“I’ve been in love with Ethan since sophomore year.”
“No shit, so why is he freaking out?” Am I that obvious?
“I came out to him. I promise I won’t get in the middle of your relationship.” She goes quite as she avoids his stare.
“We broke up a week ago.” Oh. Why wasn’t I told?
“I’m so sorry.” She shrugs.
“We had been falling apart for years. It wasn’t going to work out anyway so no harm.”
“Are you sure? You seem a little sad.”
“I don’t know how but we’re friends and under my badass exterior I really do believe in the whole best friends falling in love thing no matter how stupid it is.” So do I. The sincerity from Sarah makes Benny do a double take. “I guess it’s your turn now.”
“To do what?”
“Date Ethan.” Benny tries to protest but sputters out. “Last night he called me freaking out about how you’re in love with some guy and he googled if he was gay and honestly he may have been wasted.” His stomach turns over.
“So what do I do?”
“Tell him your feelings. It’s not that hard.”
“Easy for you to say. You haven’t know him since you were six and you’re like insanely badass.”
“I’m obsessed with Dr. Who,” she blurts out.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m not the confident girl you two make me out to be. I get scared easily and sometimes I even jump at things I here in the dark which sucks because I hear a lot of things in the dark.” They both laugh. “My point is that we both need to move past the expectations we’ve set for ourselves and just go for it.”
“So should I text him and ask if we can go out for coffee?”
“Yes, doofus. Bye.” Her tone is overly soft. She disappears with a loud beep leaving Benny to contemplate what he’s just heard. He shoots off a quick text to Ethan and gets a one word response: Yes.
***
Don’t freak, Ethan. Stay calm. This is totally only as friends. No homo even if he does like guys.
With a final deep breath he starts making his way across campus. People are milling around making him feel like they’re all looking at him. They’re not. The walk is still painfully slow as Ethan over analyzes his twelve years of friendship with Benny.
Benny is already inside the coffee shop when Ethan arrives giving him an opportunity to admire how handsome Benny is when unaware.
Keep calm. You can make it through one coffee date.
He walks over to Benny about ready to offer to buy their drinks as usual when an iced turtle latte is slid in front of him. “I got it this time as a thanks for putting up with me. I thought our coffee dates would end when I came out, but I’m glad we got at least one more in before you called it quits.”
“Benny, I would never stop our coffee dates.” He lays his hand on top of Benny’s trying to be soothing but instead he gets a vision instead and it’s considerably longer than normal. And a lot more canoodling involved.
***
“E, come back to bed. I’m cold.” Ethan turns around in the unfamiliar room to see his best friend sprawled out on a king size bed definitely shirtless and maybe more. He looks older but not by a lot. Probably only twenty-five at the most and more muscle than Ethan’s seen in Benny before.
“You know I can’t do that. I have to get to work.” He looks down to see he’s wearing a suit. “It’s hard being a young and attractive lawyer in New York City.” Lawyer? Ethan has never wanted to be a lawyer.
“You could join me as my partner in hunting the supernatural.” He raises an eyebrow trying to seduce Ethan.
“Not going to work this time, B. My parents would kill me if I threw away my education to chase fictional beasts.”
“We both know they’re not fiction. Besides, ghost hunting had made us rich.”
“All about the money with you. I think there’s a twenty-four hour marathon of you and your Buffy wannabe’s show to keep you busy until I get home.”
“One of these days I’m going to convince you go on the road with me.”
“Whatever, B. Love you.”
“Love you more, E.”
“That’s why you proposed.” With that Vision Ethan leaves the bedroom.
***
“Ethan, what did you see?”
“Benny. We need to talk.” Benny leans back in his chair with a worried look.
“What is it?”
“It’s about your coming out.” He stands up like he’s on fire.
“I just remembered I have to call my grandma.” He slips out of the coffeeshop before Ethan can catch him.
Looks like I’m going to have to venture over to PMU.
PMU, short for Prospero and Morgana University, is a small college exclusively for magic users hidden in plain sight. Think Hogwarts but more sex and less caring about if students are evil. Like lots of sex and evil college students.
As Ethan walks on to campus he can’t help but notice how heavily these kids lean into stereotypes as he sees a mix of D&D nerds and goth girls enjoying the nice afternoon.
As he looks around he notices Benny trying to slip his hood up so Ethan won’t notice him. To bad he forgot his name is printed on the back of his hoodie. “B, you always sucked at hide and seek.” He turns around and their eyes meet.
“What do you want?”
“For you not to run away from me.”
“If you want to tell me I’m a monster go ahead, but stop acting like nothing has changed between us.” By the end Benny is yelling.
“I wanted to pretend so badly that your words didn’t affect me but they did because guess what, Asshole. I’ve fallen in love with you.” They both stare.
“You’re in love with me? I thought Sarah was lying.”
“About what?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Benny pulls Ethan towards him by his T-shirt. “Doesn’t matter at all.” When their lips touch Ethan’s head spins. And not from a vision.