Parentheses: Anti-Fluff Drabbles

1. Innocent Until Proven Guilty

Though she didn't often think of it herself, and never, ever allowed herself to seriously dwell on it (except late at night, when she was trying to get to sleep, and she couldn't help it then), Gwen knew how he felt about her. She was 99.99 percent sure that Grampa didn't know, and there was no way on earth anyone else could know, so that meant it was just her and Ben, their secret, their secret that didn't exist because neither of them would admit it existed except in their heads, where no one else could hear or suspect.

It had started on the second summer vacation, when what could have been just a one time road trip started to turn into a serious routine, with all indications of going on every summer, like clockwork. And why not? The adventures were fun. Ben could always use a Plumber and a magically-gifted cousin to back him up. They all enjoyed each other's company, even if she and Ben fought with the kind of untiring relentlessness that only came with being around a hated enemy or a best friend. It had started then. Or maybe that's just when she'd started noticing it? Or maybe it had actually started later, and only her paranoia had fueled the imagined tidbits between the lines, the tiny meanings in parentheses between the fights and the quips and the insults that no one else would have caught. But regardless of when it had started, it was definitely here now, no mistaking it. And by all appearances, it was here to stay.

It was the way he looked at her, sometimes, in times of stress and emotion, usually involving monsters and mortal peril, but sometimes in rare moments of empathy. And it was also when he very deliberately didn't look at her, tried too hard to not look. It was in their rare-as-shooting-stars hugs, the way he would sometimes hug just a little too long, or cut the hug short very quickly, stumbling back with a slightly freaked out look and recovering himself with some muttering about how gross hugging people was. As they grew older, the more blatant, less subtle insults got fewer and fewer, but he always instinctively retreated to them whenever things got just a little, accidentally, weird. Antagonism was a safe haven for them, and she didn't begrudge him that quick and easy way of re-establishing normalcy whenever it became ever so slightly strained.

The very concept had freaked her out, of course, just the slightest possibility... it had made her sick to her stomach. Then, just to figure out how to deal with it, she rationalized. They hung out all the time, lived together in the summers, and Ben was a growing boy with little opportunity to socialize with the opposite gender. It was just like how people went gay in prison, just a lack of options, that was all! Totally understandable, if stupid and gross. He was a confused boy who would grow out of it and go on to be normal, as normal as a shapeshifting superhero could ever be, anyway. But he never seemed to grow out of it. And as they both grew comfortable in their shared, unspoken denial of something no one else could possibly suspect (except Grampa, and if he suspected, he was an even better actor than they were, radiating obliviousness like Santa radiated cheer), she got somewhat relaxed about it. It was there, but nothing was going to happen. She came to think of it as an unpleasant piece of furniture that she couldn't get rid of. Couldn't figure out how to fit it through the doorway, or something. If nothing happened, it didn't matter, right? Just ignore it and everything's fine. Just ignore it. She ignored it, and ignored it, and ignored it until it became so much second nature that it didn't even require conscious thought. It became instinctive to the point that she almost thought she had dreamed up the whole thing, a figment of her perverse imagination... but then some little tiny, negligible coincidence would happen, and add up with other coincidences, and reassure her in ways she never wanted to be reassured.

As they grew up, more or less together, never quite abandoning each other though they'd sometimes go for long periods without talking, she tried to set him up on dates. Between the girls she pushed his way and the ones he chased after himself, he had a pretty full calendar on weekends. But they never seemed to work out. He always came back, grinning that big Cheshire grin and mumbling some excuse about the latest disaster, how one of his growing list of nemeses had crashed the date or how the chick had turned out to be a jerk or a nutcase or just not his type. Not that he would ever tell anyone what his type was. And maybe it was just those things, maybe, but deep inside Gwen wondered if maybe it wasn't something else. If maybe Ben just wasn't letting himself get into a happy relationship with a girl, because he didn't really want any of it. He always complained about his dates to her. Especially the ones she set him up on, especially those. He had a few school friends he could have talked to about it, and there was always Grampa, or his parents, but no, he had to tell her why each and every date had failed to measure up to his foggy specifications. And with each complaint about each girl, she seemed to hear, right afterwards, the line '...but YOU'RE not like that, even if you are a dweeb/geek/nerd/freak/dork.'

She tried, a few times, to get someone herself, but the romances on her part never seemed to work out either. Not because she didn't want them to, she did, she did, but there was always something that happened. Fred cheated on her, Constance had accused her of being a witch after finding out about her occult interests, and Jonathan had been disturbingly determined to get a sex change operation. And even when she was with someone, it just made things harder. Ben wasn't stupid, he got the hint, he kept as far away as she could have ever wanted... but he kept away while trying, unsuccessfully, to hide a kicked puppy look from his face. And though she hated to admit it to herself, she hated even more to see him looking so sad, and hated, most of all, his attempts to hide it, good enough to fool everyone but her and Grampa. When dating failed, she dove into her books, constantly telling him that she was far too busy with school, with magic, with learning things so she could be somebody to bother with hanging out with her cousin. But she could only stand that look on his face for so long, all the more unbearable because he didn't want her to know it was there.

When her mastery over spells became reasonably proficient, she considered drastic measures. There were ways to reprogram the mind, using psychic influences. Using ephemeral, untraceable magical energies defter than any surgeon's knife. The reagents would have been expensive, but not out of her budget. It wouldn't have hurt him, or her. All it would have done was quietly slice away a part of him that neither of them wanted to begin with, so they could be normal, really normal again, and not just faking it. Her thoughts still drifted to it sometimes, but ultimately she rejected it. It was wrong, to screw with someone's head like that. To change who they were without their permission. And God knows she wasn't courageous enough to ask for permission! What if she'd been wrong, all these years? What would he think of her then? Who would be the pervert after that, huh?!

She wished it wasn't so, and he almost certainly wished the same, but there was nothing to be done about it. Nothing to do except live with it, and there wasn't an it so there was no problem, everything was perfectly normal, lalala! Most distracting and disturbing of all were the times of brief insanity, usually when she'd had one beer too many at a party, when she just wanted him to blurt it out and get it over with. As if that would have been some kind of release, to let them move on with their lives. Hah! What would that do, except make them social outcasts for the rest of their lives, and make things between them utterly awkward? It wasn't as though there was anything to gain from it. God knows she didn't return his feelings. Not even a little bit.

They grew up and grew older, and for all that watching eyes could tell, had perfectly normal lives, aside from the whole magic and alien superhero gigs. And if they spent just a little bit more time around each other than most cousins, and backed each other up in alien fights at the drop of a hat, well, there was nothing wrong with that, now was there? And if they had to go on dancing their little dance and wearing their little masks till time stopped, what of it? Everyone had secrets. Especially superheroes, it was practically required for superheroes! And this was one secret Gwen intended to take with her to the grave without it ever passing her lips to anyone, even to the one other person she shared it with.

Because, while she liked excitement and adventure and a little danger to spice up normal life, there were limits to how much abnormal she could tolerate. Because she could risk her life easier than she could withstand the disapproving stares of her family. Because fighting aliens was way easier than enduring the whispers, real and imagined, of scornful strangers and acquaintances. Because tentacles squeezing the life out of her had nothing on the shocked, disturbed look she pictured a thousand times on Grampa's face. Because having a flesh-annihiliating laser an inch from her skull was much, much less scary than the idea that Ben Tennyson, Ben Ten eventually Thousand, had less than appropriate feelings for his cousin. It was scary for her sake, and for his, and for everyone close to them, and she just couldn't deal with it, she refused to deal with it.

And so life went on, and the adventures continued, and everything was normal. Except for, sometimes, the looks they shared, accidental, brief, but intense. There was nothing wrong with exchanging looks, was there? There wasn't anything wrong with that. Nothing weird about it.

The magic and the alien watch were the only weird things about them, she always told new friends, in a dry, joking tone. There wasn't anything else to separate them from regular people.

There wasn't anything else at all.