(no subject)
Fic #18: Better
Request: WYWM, Ethan/Isaac, prompt: spider swinging
Requested by: p_bug
Length: 670
Rated: PG-13
Notes: This was the cutest prompt ever.
“Oh my God, look! A playground!” Isaac had hopped over the chainlink fence, oblivious to the lock that was on the gate, before the words were all the way out of his mouth. Ethan gave him a long-suffering look. “C’mon!”
“Do I have to?” Ethan asked.
Isaac drooped. “Yes?” he tried.
Ethan laughed. “Okay,” he said, and climbed over the fence, a little more deliberately and carefully than his lover. He dropped down on the other side. “I don’t think we’re supposed to be here,” he said. “This park is private property, you know. It belongs to the little school over there.”
“So what?” Isaac asked. “It’s ten o’clock at night. They’re not using it. Spider swing with me!”
“Who-to-the-what-now with you?”
“Spider swing, you know.” Isaac sat down on one of the swings and patted his lap. “You sit on my lap facing me. We did it all the time when we were kids.”
“We’re not kids,” Ethan pointed out. “Are we sure that it’ll hold us both? And why is it called spider swinging, anyway?”
Isaac thought about it. “Because there’ll be one body and eight limbs,” he said proudly.
Ethan considered this. “That’s retarded.” But he went over and sat on Isaac’s lap anyway. It took some doing to get them situated properly, and the swing creaked ominously at a few moments, but before long they were seated comfortably. Isaac’s legs were long enough to propel them even though the swing was fairly high.
“See?” Isaac asked. “It’s like being eight years old again!”
Ethan let out a snort but didn’t reply. They swung in silence for a few minutes.
“Hey, Isaac?”
“Hm?”
“When did you realize you were in love with me?”
Isaac laughed. “Two weeks after you started dating Alec.”
Ethan laughed, too. “Really?”
“Oh, yeah. Big time, seriously. I was your best friend, you know? We were like brothers. Defend each other to the death and all that jazz. And I always hated your boyfriends, but it was just because they were assholes and treated you like shit. So when you started dating Alec, he seemed like an okay guy. A slut, but you know, okay. And I thought, maybe this is a guy I can get along with.”
“For two weeks?”
“Yeah, for two weeks.” Isaac pushed them back and they swung lazily. “And then you went over to his place and didn’t come back ‘til really late and I was all set to really hate his guts if I thought he’d done anything he shouldn’t. And you were all dreamy-eyed and when I started breathing fire you were like no, it’s not like that, he didn’t do anything. You two just talked and watched movies and stuff like that. And I thought, thank God! Ethan’s got a boyfriend who doesn’t treat him like shit! And I wanted to fucking kill him.”
Ethan let out a snort. “Stupidhead.”
“Big time. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy for you, but I still wanted to fucking kill him. And then he killed Tommy and things started to go south, and finally he up and vanished, and then I really wanted to kill him. But I was also a tiny bit happy, and felt like crap for it, ‘cause I thought I might finally get a chance. Except, you know, my own gutlessness kept anything from happening for like four years afterwards.”
Ethan squirmed a little closer, nearly overbalancing them. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he said. “In the end, I think it’s better this way.”
“You think we wouldn’t still be together, if we’d started dating back then?”
“No, I think we would be,” Ethan said thoughtfully. “But I don’t think I’d be treating you very well.”
Isaac put his arms around Ethan’s waist and pulled him in for a kiss.
After a minute, Ethan pulled away, flexing his hips against Isaac’s. “Mm. I don’t remember that part from when we were eight.”
“You’re right,” Isaac said. “Things are definitely better this way.”