#evthecryptid

Rory startles as an arm wraps around his shoulders, shaking him out of his focus on the conversation he was trying to have with a babe from the cheer squad, though trying had really been the operative word. Ever since Betty left, he’s been swinging and missing with all the girls in the short skirts, but that’s okay. Half the fun is the flirting anyway. His shoulders are weighed down by Benny’s arm, which is comfortable for a lot of reasons, but inconvenient for trying to get this babe to pick up what the Rorster is putting down. 

“Hey, Ror, you mind if me and E borrow you for a second? We need you for that thing,” Benny says, winking at Rory in a totally obvious way that definitely doesn’t make Rory a little weak in the knees. Okay, so maybe it does, but he’s a bisexual teenage disaster and Benny is hot and he’s weak, man. But, this is totally an interruption, a mood killer, a cock block, and Rory has not done anything to deserve this. He shrugs at the girl and goes with Benny anyway, if only so things will be less awkward, but he’s not really happy about it. 

Benny guides him a little down the hall to where Ethan is chilling in an alcove thing (he doesn’t really know what they’re called, but alcove sounds cool, anyway) before taking his arm off of Rory’s shoulders, which is totally not cool. If Rory can’t score with some cheerleader chick, he should at least get the warmth of the spellmaster’s skin. He can never seem to get warm anymore, and he wants Benny to wrap around him and never go. 

“So what’s up?” Rory asks, looking between his bros. Ethan gives Benny his panicky eyes that mean he didn’t think he would get this far, and Rory holds himself from thinking about how damn cute his bro is.  He and Ethan are just bros - he’s pretty sure that E’s even straight, even if Rory knows that Benny is bi (and thus Rory sometimes thinks he might have a chance). Benny turns an awkward grin to Rory. 

“How you doing, bud?” Benny asks, making Ethan scrub a hand down his own face. Rory raises an eyebrow, trying to keep his cool, but a little mad about being dragged away from a babe if the bros didn’t need anything. Bros before hoes, but not if the bros don’t even need him for anything. Then it’s just the hoes. 

“Why did you drag me away from that cheer babe? I was wearing her down!” Rory lies; her scent didn’t change at all, and she really seemed just as done with him by the time he was dragged away as she was when he first walked up to her to give her back her wallet. He notices things falling that humans seem to just not see at all, but at least being a good Samaritan gives him an excuse to talk to girls. 

“Oh, no reason. We just wanted to talk to you,” Ethan says, giving Rory an awkward smile. They’re being really awkward, both of them, and it’s seriously messing with Rory’s vibes. He raises both of his eyebrows now, slipping into an awkward smile of his own. 

“You guys wanna just tell me why you did it?” he asks, searching both of their faces. They’re both startlingly beautiful; he swears that he can remember when they were awkward little things, just boys that played chess and talked about Harry Potter too much, but they’re both so beautiful now. He honestly doesn’t think he’s going to get an answer, but both boys start speaking at once. 

“Well, you see-” Benny starts, but he stops to stare at Ethan, awesome but totally not naturally brave Ethan, who says 

“Because we’re in love with you and tired of seeing you flirt with every girl that crosses your path.” It’s said in a deadpan voice like admitting it means almost nothing, like Ethan isn’t saying something that Rory has wanted to hear since, like, middle school. He has the tone to his voice that he gets when he’s repeating something from a vision, or maybe when some truth is coming out of his mouth unbidden. What he says seems to catch up with Ethan all at once before he’s looking at Benny with panicking eyes once again, expecting the taller boy to dig him out of the hole he’s fallen into. Instead, Rory steps between them, a place where he could never have imagined being welcome in before. 

“You guys love me?” Rory asks, his voice light and breakable and a thousand fragile things. Ethan breaks into a smile that looks just as careful as the burgeoning feeling in Rory’s chest, nodding. 

“Benny, I think your truth spell has a bit of a lag,” Ethan says around Rory, his smile receding some. He seems to realise the implications of admitting things to Rory, seems to realise that they’re all three still right here and that no one is leaving him. 

“Rory... you don’t have to say anything back. It’s not like we’re-” Ethan starts, but Rory just cuts him off by kissing him in the middle of the hallway, Benny’s shadow of warmth cutting across his back as he holds Ethan Morgan’s face in his hands, beautiful, fragile, and his. Benny’s arms wrap around his waist and Rory is pulled flush against the taller boy’s chest, human warmth curling around him and making something like satisfaction curl in Rory’s stomach, preening. 

“Well, well, well, boys,” a voice says, breaking the three of them apart with sound alone. It’s just Erica, Sarah in tow, but the reminder that it could be much worse is not lost on any of the three of them. Benny detaches himself from Rory, letting the blond extricate himself from the human sandwich he would totally not mind being the meat in again. 

“Well, you see, what had happened was-” Benny tries to start again, but Erica cuts him off.