Work Text:
Sebastian thought his job, though time-consuming, would be the best for him. He was great at coding, the money was good, and he could work from home and—if he was lucky—on his own project from time to time. It kept him at home to help Malia with the farm when she needed him to (and she never said she needed him to, but she bought two new cows and was crazy), and protect him from the hideous light of the sun without the shame of being someone who sits at home with no job.
He liked being able to stay home—meaning it was possible for one Client from Hell to mess up his entire week.
He and his client were not agreeing on any changes or any of the quoted prices for this enormous project, and it seemed like it may fall through until The Email.
It seems like we’re not getting anything done this way—come to my office and we can talk in person.
“Oh, wow,” Malia was sitting on the arm of the couch, holding his work tablet, “and you haven’t spontaneously combusted yet?”
“I don’t even like talking to him online, there’s no reason I should drive two hours to ZuZu City to talk to his face.” Sebastian spun around in his chair lazily, but it was obvious to his wife that he was on edge.
“You sound like you’re going to anyway, though.”
“It’s a…” he began, taking a breath, “I mean, it’s a pretty big project.”
“How big?”
“Don’t freak out,” Sebastian told her. She’d come to Stardew Valley with nearly nothing in her pockets, so the very concept of money put her on edge – though the success of her farm and the dual-income was helping significantly. “…twenty grand.”
“twenty g—” Malia fell off of her already precarious resting place, as her husband had expected. “What are you doing for twenty-thousand gold?”
“Everything,” Sebastian groaned, “the new software he’s trying to push is bugged to hell, he wants a new website, the system he’s using for inventory right now is so ancient not even mom would touch it, so I have to set up something usable…and he doesn’t get that the amount of time and work that’s got to go into this is insane, and he’s been trying to get me to cut corners or whatever I have to do to make it cheaper.”
“But you’re not putting your name on anything half-assed,” Malia stood up and sat down on the couch near his computer properly.
“Hell no,” Sebastian agreed, “meaning I am driving two hours to ZuZu City to talk numbers with a man named Milton."
“Oh, Yoba, his name is Milton?
“Yeah, that’s another problem I have with him.”
*
Sebastian, for once, was up before Malia. This Milton guy wanted to meet him at nine in the morning, despite Sebastian telling him the commute on a motorcycle was no less than two hours, so he had to leave no later than seven in the morning, and he still had to eat something (his stomach’s idea) and make himself look semi-presentable (Malia’s idea).
“Mmf…” it was fairly close to when Malia was usually up, though she seemed still firmly rooted in sleep, “you goin’…?”
“Yeah,” Sebastian sighed, “and you’re sure you don’t need me to bring anything back?”
“Jus’ you…”
“You’re a sap.” He kissed her forehead anyway. “Wish me luck.”
“Don’t explode.”
“No promises.”
Though it may seem like a dreary thought for anyone else, something about riding a motorcycle in the rain was invigorating for Sebastian, and almost made him forget about his upcoming mandatory human interaction until he found a parking ramp within reasonable distance of Milton’s office and, as he realized with about as much elation as a guy like him could muster, a coffee shop. He was not running on nearly enough coffee to get through this.
The rain had stopped by the time he got to the crosswalk he needed to get over to the ridiculous skyscraper this idiot worked in, and it was at that crosswalk that made Sebastian realize a bizarre difference between Pelican Town and this concrete jungle.
There were kids, like, everywhere.
Back home there was Vincent and there was Jas, who were both quickly growing, but here there was no such shortage and holy shit. There were couples crossing the street with him (of course there was a school next door) that looked the same age as him and Malia, maybe a little older or a little younger, and they had kids.
And it was…weird.
People the same age as him were not parents. Jodi and Kent were parents. Pierre and Caroline, they were parents. His mother was a parent. He was not. Malia was not. Well, obviously it was possible, based on these living visual aids passing by him, but they’d never talked about—
…About…
No. No no no no no, he had a big meeting coming up, he wouldn’t let himself think about anything as heavy as this when he needed to be in an elevator with stuffy adults in suits. He could think about this later.
No! Not later. Never. Stop thinking about it.
He had a meeting to get to.
*
“Seb, are you okay?” Malia asked as she prepared dinner – Robin’s pumpkin soup, because Sebastian was stressed and she was starving. “You’ve been quiet, except it’s the weird kind of quiet.”
“Huh?” Sebastian lifted his head to look around at her from the kitchen table, “no, yeah, I’m fine.”
“You said the deal worked out,” Malia mused, “did something else happen?”
“Why—why would something else have happened?”
“Because you’re doing that thing where you’re evasive.”
“Food ready yet?”
“Sebastian!” Malia put the spoon down on the counter and turned around fully. He looked away, but he could hear her approaching footsteps. “What’s going on?” She asked, more gently.
Sebastian knew he had to approach this topic carefully, with tact, or his wife might think he was crazy.
“People our age have babies.”
None of the books in his old room had anything about speaking carefully and with tact, however, and it certainly wasn’t something he practiced often.
“…What?”
“In the city,” Sebastian began after a moment, “people our age—maybe older, closer to thirty, but not that much older – they have kids. Like, human lives. To take care of. And it’s…weird.”
“I don’t know if it’s that—”
“I mean can you imagine it? Like, Sam, or Abigail, or Haley, with children. Sam can’t even find his shoes sometimes. And a kid is like, a little person, that you make, and then you have to help it grow up and that’s…that’s crazy. It’s nuts. Insane.”
“Seb…”
“Please just agree. Just tell me ‘Sebastian, having kids is crazy, so let’s not.’”
Malia didn’t say anythingd for once, he couldn’t stand it. However, when she finally spoke, he hated it even more.
“Sebastian…do you want to have a baby?”
No. The answer is no, idiot, so just say it. It’s one syllable. Make it come out of your mouth. No.
“I—I don’t know.”
“That’s, like, a total non-answer,” Malia told him. She headed back to the stove to turn it off, so she could sit back down. “And that’s what’s bugging you, isn’t it?”
“Yes, okay? A month ago if you had asked me if I wanted to have kids I would’ve been sure, okay? I would’ve probably said no but it would’ve been a solid no. An actual answer. Now all I can say is ‘I don’t know’ because…because I don’t know.”
Malia’s expression twitched, changing from one emotion to another, before she seemed to come to some quiet realization. She grabbed his hand and looked him in the eye.
“You’re saying you don’t know because…you know if you say yes, then things would change around here.”
He didn’t look into his wife’s eyes or say anything, despite knowing this behavior was the equivalent of admitting defeat.
“And you want to say yes, don’t you?” Still nothing. “Sebastian.”
“…Yeah. I do. But, I mean, it’s not up to me, I’m not the one that does the most work in this equation, and you’re a farmer, and you like working—”
“I can figure it out.”
“Okay, but there’s no room—”
“We’ve been saving so we can add on, Seb. You’re inventing problems, okay, you always do when there’s something that has even the potential to make you happy. You nearly tried to talk me out of marrying you and you almost talked yourself out of making your game. Things can go right for you without it being some fluke of the universe, you know?”
He winced when she brought up the past—though he knew why she was doing it. Days before their wedding it had hit him that he was a freelancer living in his mother’s basement and she was self-made and she was wonderful and it would be unfair of him to take her off the market like that, unfair to her to be stuck with him. She’d managed to talk some sense into him, but he hated that she remembered it so clearly after almost three years.
“I’d have to be a father.”
“That’s…yeah, that’s part of the deal.”
“I don’t know how.”
He didn’t know if his voice breaking on how was helping or hurting his reasoning. His father, wherever the hell he ended up, wasn’t a great example, and Demetrius—like hell he would ever take any parenting tips from him.
“I don’t exactly have any mom experience either, you know?” Sebastian finally looked up at her and saw she was trying not to smile, and that meant that she was getting excited. He thought she was over the moon when they got a second barn, that was apparently nothing compared to baby talk.
“So,” Malia stood up from her chair and made her way over to his, pulling it back and straddling herself on his lap. Oh boy. “If we’re in agreement, like I think we might be…” She trailed off and began focus much of her…attentions on his neck.
“We should…probably get started.”
“Mhmm…” he felt her nod, and he wrapped his arms around her tightly and stood up, forcing her to wrap her legs around his waist. “Just don’t drop me.”
“I have never dropped you.”
“You dropped me three days ago!”
“Then stop coming onto me like this. Find me when I’m in a safe, upright position, and no one has to worry.”
“That’s no way to speak to the future mother of your chi—AH!”
“Whoops.”