drainbusters

[morganweir]

t4t bethan moment

swapping more than spit

find it on ao3

Benny shoves off her jeans and throws them at Ethan, excitedly picking up the skirt that the boy had just thrown away in disgust. She’s a ten year old girl and she rarely, if ever, gets to wear the things that she likes, so she thinks it’s perfectly valid for her to be so damn excited about it. Damn is the only swear word she can say without Ethan looking at her like she killed the prime minister or something, or else she would probably say worse stuff. He’s sensitive about stuff like that, like Grandma Weir and Ethan’s parents will just know if she says anything someone deems as inappropriate. 

It’s dumb, but it’s a small price to pay to have Ethan. Having Ethan is worth just about anything. 

“How do I look?” she asks when she slides the fabric properly over her thin hips, unable to catch it on a wideness that isn’t present in her, but sliding it up to her belly button instead. It’s a little long on her - purchased for the fact that Ethan is taller than her (for now) rather than Benny’s shorter stature. She likes being shorter than Ethan, sometimes. He’s her best friend, and it makes her feel… delicate, in a way that she rarely can. To everyone else, she’s Benjamin Weir, a boy. In Ethan’s bedroom, with just Ethan and the soft sunlight coming in through the window and the clothes they swap more often than they don’t, it feels like everything is okay. She’s just Benny. 

They keep doing it. Middle school comes and goes and high school arrives and Benny still wears skirts and dresses at Ethan’s house when no one can look at her and everything is good when she’s there. She tells Grandma at some point around her twelfth birthday, unable to hold it in anymore, but she still doesn’t get Grandma to buy her skirts of her own. The ones that are Ethan’s first fit better, even when Benny shoots up and gets taller than her best friend and feels a little sick about it. 

Ethan’s parents know that he’s Ethan and that he’s a boy, but they still buy him skirts. Everyone knows that they’re not for Ethan. Everyone plays pretend. 

Benny isn’t out to the rest of their friends. No one uses pronouns to your face all that often, and most of the time she’s fine - she can forget that most people think she looks like a boy and that Rory calls them his guy friends and that everything kinda sucks when she concentrates too hard, because this is what survival looks like. Ethan moved to Whitechapel at an age old enough that no one knew that once upon a time, he didn’t look like a boy, but Benny. Benny was born here. There’s no way to introduce Whitechapel to the fact that she’s a girl quietly, so she doesn’t want to do it at all. Even if it means just being herself in her own home and the house across the street from her’s. 

It’s a small town. Sometimes, you have to do small town things. 

When Ethan starts dating Sarah, Benny does her best not to feel jealous. She tries her best to not get angry. She tries her best not to cry, even when her longest, closest friend seems to care for someone else more than he cares for her. It’s a small price to pay to have Ethan. Having Ethan is worth just about anything. 

She’s still a little happy when Ethan breaks it off with Sarah. It just means that they get to hang out more. She gets her best friend back; she had fun hanging out with Rory more, goofing off and surfing the web with her other best friend, even if he doesn’t know some of the fundamental things about her. She still likes him. That’s why they’re friends. She just… Ethan knows more. He has more of the ability to say the right things on her bad days, to tell her she’s pretty even when she thinks he’s lying, to make her feel like she really is. They get to hang out more again. Of course she’s happy. 

Also, a tiny, petty part of her is pleased as punch that it was her Ethan that broke it off with a hot girl like Sarah Fox. Yeah, Ethan is hot and handsome and pretty, but no one else seems to see it as much as Benny always has. She’s just pretty goddamn happy that he was the one to do it. 

“Benny, do you want to go on a date with me?” Ethan asks one day when Benny is lying upside down with her head hanging off of his bed, and she completely and totally cannot be blamed for falling off of the bed. She recovers well enough, she thinks, rolling onto her feet clumsily. She stands and Ethan stands out of his seat and he’s still not as tall as her, but he has so much presence to him that sometimes it feels like he is. She could be okay with the fact that she’s taller than him. She kinda likes how small he is. Like she could carry him around everywhere with her and no one would bat an eye. She startles when he reaches out for her, settling a hand on one of her hips. 

“A date?” she asks, hating the way that her voice cracks, but it needs to be said. Ethan still has a hand on her hip, her hip that has the skirt of a dress that Ethan’s parents bought covering it, and Ethan’s hand is so warm and feels good, and like it belongs on her skin. She loves him like breathing, especially when he breaks into a smile. 

“A date,” Ethan confirms, his hand moving just slightly so that the palm of his hand is against her hip, his fingers doing slow, comforting circles against her. All she feels is butterflies in her stomach, the warmth of Ethan’s hand against her skirt, and her pounding heart. She breaks into a smile of her own. 

“A date sounds nice,” she says, leaning down to set her forehead against Ethan’s. When he leans up and kisses her, that’s nice too. 

[queerbennyweir]

t4t bethan but benny is transfem and ethan is transmasc