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“I was thinking we could move our study date to your place tonight, instead,” Danny says over lunch on a Tuesday. He bites into an apple and nudges his shoulder to Ethan’s lightly. Ethan hears the words, but his attention is focused on watching Aiden stare at them from across the cafeteria. He’s dangling from Lydia’s arm like a new accessory and scowling fiercely.
After a moment, Ethan watches his brother be dragged out of the double doors, and Ethan looks down at his half eaten sandwich. He pushes it away.
“Hey,” Danny says, and does a little wave in front of Ethan’s face. His hand lands on Ethan’s wrist and his thumb rubs tiny circles. Ethan looks up through his eyelashes and smiles at him.
“Sorry,” is all he replies. Danny has a tiny piece of apple stuck between his teeth and Ethan stares at it instead of Danny’s eyes. Staring at Danny’s eyes is a thing he finds himself doing too often, according to Aiden, and he’s been trying to cut back a little every day. Like a drug addict, Ethan thinks.
Danny’s dimples disappear for a moment and Ethan can’t help himself, so he looks up at Danny’s eyes and finds raised brows and an inquisitive expression. “I still haven’t met your folks,” Danny says after a moment. The apple in his teeth is gone, so Ethan lets his gaze rest on Danny’s hair.
“So you haven’t,” Ethan says blandly. He rolls his shoulders and glances back to the double door, but they’re closed. Aiden is still with Lydia, and he knows because he can feel his brother’s vague irritation buzzing in the bottom of his chest. It’s funny, their connection. They don’t know exactly where the other is, but they know when it’s too far; when it’s too far it starts to hurt. Lately it’s been hurting a bit more with passing time, even though they’ve stayed near each other in the flesh. Beacon Hills has that effect, Ethan has noticed in his time here. It tears people apart and brings them together of its own accord, regardless of what you want or what your intentions are.
Ethan looks back at Danny and smiles, because Aiden is gone and there’s nobody there to tell him not to wear his heart on his sleeve. He lifts a hand and brushes back an imaginary strand of Danny’s hair from his forehead. “Did you say something about a date?” He asks teasingly. The distance between their chairs is lessened with a squeak of metal on linoleum and Danny leans forward, rests his face on his palm.
Somehow Danny always manages to make a room seem much smaller than it really is, especially when he leans in close and looks at Ethan like that. It’s as if his warm, open face fills the space up, right to the ceiling and into the cracks in the walls, muffling everyone’s voices. Ethan imagines something similar happens to his chest, because the usual emptiness he’s growing more and more accustomed to feels like it’s overflowing when Danny looks at him like that.
Danny’s voice is soft and relaxing to Ethan’s ears. “I was just wondering when I’ll get to meet the rest of your family,” he asks gently, and there are the dimples again. Ethan makes a sound on acknowledgement but doesn’t talk. He wants to savour every moment. He occupies himself by counting the freckles on Danny’s nose.
When he gets to thirty, he clears his throat and avoids Danny’s eyes again. “I don’t want you to meet my family,” he replies. I don’t have any family, his mind offers, like a complete-the-blank; I just have another half of me.
Danny looks confused for a moment and frowns. “Why not?” He wonders out loud. Ethan just shakes his head absently.
“Are your family not cool with you dating me?” Danny asks, voice gentle, and he rests his hand back on Ethan’s wrist like they’ve been magnetised.
Suddenly the small distance between them doesn’t feel so comforting. It’s overwhelming and hot and it’s strangling him. Relationship, happiness, love – Danny deserves all of those things, wants all of them, and Ethan just doesn’t have them to give. He’s lying to Danny and himself. The ground he’s standing on feels like it’s shaking and crumbling and he knows that soon it will just be a pile of rubble under his feet. He buries his face in his hands and rubs at his eyes, as though that’ll make everything seem clearer. It doesn’t.
“They aren’t very accepting,” Ethan says quietly. His mind flashes to the talk he’d had with Deucalion, about getting close enough to the threat to keep an eye on them, but not so close you lose the big picture. He hates to think that there are still part of himself he could lose.
He shakes himself alert and sits up straight. He’s playing the joker – homophobic parents don’t want his boyfriend to visit. He wishes that were the least of his problems. Focus on the task at hand, he tells himself.
He hears Danny’s sharp inhale of breath and doesn’t look over. He knows Danny’s angry, can feel it coming off of him in waves, and it’s the opposite of how Danny smells when they’re laying together on Danny’s bed. Ethan isn’t sure he likes it.
Ethan still won’t let himself turn to watch Danny, even when he starts talking. “You know there’s nothing wrong with you,” he says, and there’s a desperate edge to his voice. “Your family should be able to accept you. Aiden does,” he points out, and Ethan can’t help but smile darkly at that. Aiden told me he would tear off your face, he thinks, but the memory makes something catch in his throat and he closes his eyes again.
Danny’s warm hands are on his face in an instant, soft and light, but at the same time it feels as though he’s holding on for dear life. “They need to learn that they can’t change you,” Danny says sensitively and earnestly, head ducked in such a way that Ethan has no choice but to stare back at Danny’s eyes. It feels like sudden relief. A relapse. Danny’s eyelashes are long and his eyes are dark and intense, filled with something that Ethan can’t (won’t) put his finger on.
Ethan thinks about it – ‘they need to learn that they can’t change you.’ He smiles weakly. Danny is so loving and kind that he finds it’s all he can focus on. It makes him feel powerful and strong, so much so that for a second he doesn’t think about Deucalion, or the war they’re fighting, or the underlying feeling of terror that flows between himself and Aiden constantly. He just feels full, complete, accepted. It fills up his chest and spills into the shimmering air between them.
He knows the feeling will disappear, as it always does, so Ethan makes the most of it and bridges the gap between them. He presses his lips to Danny’s and feels like he can breathe again; like nicotine hitting his lungs. The room is spinning and they’re in the middle of the cafeteria but Ethan has more important things to worry about – except he doesn’t worry about them. Not while he’s kissing Danny.
Pulling apart from each other is a long process, and they’re breathing in each other’s air desperately for what feels like hours afterwards, Ethan just clinging on for that one last hit before the withdrawal kicks in again.
“You’re perfect,” Ethan tells Danny, because it’s true. They clutch at each other’s hands under the table and squirm in the plastic chairs under the fluorescent lights. Danny smiles his sleepy-eyed smile, dimples just showing through.
“So are you,” Danny replies, giving Ethan’s hand a squeeze and glancing at his watch. “Some other time, when you’re more prepared, you can introduce me,” he adds comfortingly. His lips are shiny and his eyes are sparkling.
Ethan nods and grips onto the hand as though it’s a light in the darkness, hoping for the millionth time that there’ll be another day to just sit close to Danny.