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Sebastian prided himself on his ability to see things realistically, and the ability to be honest with himself and his own shortcomings.
He was as aware of his “good first impression” skills needing work as he was that he was that, no, he probably was not going to work on them. He recognized that his quiet distance could be mistaken for rudeness about as often as it was an act of completely intentional rudeness, and he punched Sam in the shoulder every time he called him a sourpuss but never denied it.
One thing that set Sebastian off, however, was when people called him lazy.
He worked damn hard at his job, that savings account didn't appear out of thin air. Yes, sometimes he took days off because dealing with people and staring at code for ten hours straight left him feeling like a wrung out sponge. There were days where he seemed to do nothing but they often ended in late nights of doing everything he needed to do. Did he have the shittiest internal clock ever? Yes. Was that likely due to his own behavior? Also yes. But he was not lazy.
He even started helping with farm work as soon as he moved in with Malia, exhausting as it was. He had to do it early, before the sun got too high but the hoodie stayed on no matter what, fuck the system.
Of course, he had just been “helping.” He would feed the animals or water the crops. Not both, and no planting (no one was to till Malia’s soil but Malia, husband or not), no tree felling, no getting rid of boulders (which Sebastian would not be averse to trying, if only to disprove his wife’s accusation of him having “noodle arms”), no harvesting (“that's not what a ripe artichoke looks like!” “It's green! That's all I know about them!”), nothing besides the simple necessities.
This wasn't a problem before, because Malia was not pregnant before. At first, Sebastian tried to keep to routine as that was obviously what she preferred, but after maybe two months, he noticed that even with his help she was getting done later, and he'd catch her taking more breaks and continuing to look exhausted when they were over. Every other morning she got a late start because she was sick, and even when Sebastian finally got her to agree to teach him to do the majority of work, she was still afraid to let her farm grow in someone else’s hands for what may very well be a year.
(Sebastian predicted he'd have to stop her from plowing the field days after actually giving birth and he wasn't looking forward to it).
“Okay, so these are...blueberries?”
“Yeah, plant them all in one section -- I have a lot of seeds so we can make it...eight by three, I think.”
“What if I planted them in a zigzag pattern? What would you do to me?”
“I'd commission my mother-in-law for a coffin in the exact dimensions of her only son. I don't want to have to do that, Seb.”
Sebastian wanted to know when the pregnancy mood swings were going to come in -- this was a bit too normal for him.
“What about Tetris shapes? You like Te--” he choked on the rest of his words when Malia knocked the milking bucket she was holding into his elbow.
“Just. Till. The soil.”
“Right…” he did manage to make a boring, run of the mill rectangle, and soon found himself on his hands and knees with her, planting tiny, currently berry-less sprouts.
“See? This is fun.” Malia told him, and the way she smiled to Sebastian that this really was fun for her, while he could do without dirt underneath his fingernails. He almost felt guilty taking it away from her, until he saw her struggle slightly to get back to her feet.
“You okay?” He asked after he'd given her his hand to help her. She brushed off her jeans and he did the same.
“Yeah, yeah, I'm good...it's just so weird ,” she told him, looking down at her stomach, which still only had a slight curve to it, “like I don't totally look pregnant but I still feel, like, heavy. Like there's a rock in my stomach. It’s nothing, just different.”
Malia was never shy -- their first few meetings were basically made up of her oversharing and him nodding along, at first with no interest -- something that eventually developed into something more genuine. Within minutes she knew about nearly her entire family (except her mother, but Sebastian had never asked) and within months he knew more about her than he knew about almost everyone else in his life simply because she was incapable of not talking.
It was Sebastian’s knowledge of her refusal to hide things that made him realize: she was hiding something.
Yes, all of her pregnancy symptoms were normal, and probably attributed to her stiff mood, but he’d noticed that she was still unusually stressed -- something Harvey and his sister had told her wasn’t good for her. All of his husband-ly knowledge brought him to the idea that her new condition was bothering her, but it was far from the only things that was.
Sebastian allowed her to just teach him about the animal care instead of talking about anything personal, but once they went inside for the day, it felt awkward. She was making dinner and, while she didn’t burn it, her mind was obviously elsewhere. She seemed distant and distracted until he made to sit down on the left side of the couch in their living room.
“Wait don’t sit there--”
It was too late, and Sebastian heard the crunching sound of crumpled up paper being disturbed by the sudden weight. Sebastian stood up and lifted the cushion to see at lead ten balled-up pieces of notebook paper hidden beneath it.
When Sebastian lifted one up and unfurled it, he only heard a resigned, “please, it’s nothing,” and nothing else, but he allowed himself to continue his investigation anyway.
Dear Mom
Mom
I’m pleased to inform
I think you’ll want to know
I’m really happy to tell you that I’m pregnant.
I know that you and me
I know that things between you and me
I know we’re not close anymore but I wanted to tell you. Even though you didn’t come to couldn’t make it to the wedding I just wanted you to know that I am really happy.
Love
Yours Truly
Sincerely,
Malia
They were all like that, scribbled out letters to the mother-in-law he’d never known, all relating to the baby except for one, which was a draft invite to their wedding -- three years old.
“Mal?”
“I can’t send them,” she said quickly, not offering any explanation he couldn’t divine on his own, “I want to and I know I should, but I can’t deal with this again.”
“Whoa, whoa, what do you mean ‘again’?”
Malia seemed to move in slow motion toward him, leaning on the couch beside him, on the cushion that wasn’t currently on the floor. She leaned her entire weight against him, so he leaned back and put his arm around her, waiting for her to speak.
“Remember I told you my mom and I aren’t...we’re not…” she crossed her fingers in front of her to indicate, basically, that they weren’t close, “well, that wasn’t a lie.”
“I never thought it was,” he told her, “why did you think you needed to hide this from me?”
“It’s embarrassing, Seb! And I’m a liar, on top of everything!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Which is less fucking humiliating, Seb, that I didn’t invite my own mother to our wedding, or that I did and got a paragraph about how much she didn’t want to be there?”
Sebastian didn’t know what to say to her, and he had only just gotten decent at comforting someone who was crying, as his wife was now beginning to do in spite of her attempts to hide it. She buried her face in his chest.
“I want her to be happy for me,” she said, her words muffled by his hoodie, “she thinks I should’ve stayed at Joja and as far as she’s concerned I ruined my life and she says she ‘couldn’t bear to see the disaster’ that I must have become ever since I stopped listening to her.”
Sebastian felt anger flare in his chest. His father had never been around and Demetrius had failed him over and over, but at least he had the benefit of being able to stop caring. He knew that that skill didn’t come to Malia quite as easily.
“I...I hate being so angry, she’s my mother , but...ugh!”
He just had no idea what to say to her. He managed to get the last couch cushion back in place so he could lay down with her beside him. She only nuzzled into his chest deeper, possibly embarrassed at expressing such negativity.
“I think...you’re gonna be a great mom. And that we’re gonna be happy. And if she doesn’t see that, then...sometimes if people are making your life harder, they don’t belong in it.”
She just nodded, grabbing his hand and holding it close to her.
“I still wanna tell her,” she murmured.
“Tell you what,” Sebastian said, “you send whatever letter you want, and I’ll get the mail every day -- and if she sends back something shitty, it’s getting thrown away.”
She started shaking with laughter he couldn’t hear, and he considered it a victory. They shifted slightly on the couch, to more comfortably be close to each other.
“Hey Seb?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m really glad I ruined my life with you.”
“Listen, I can’t tell you how honored I am to be a casualty in the human disaster that is you.”
It took some effort, but his tiny wife managed to roll him onto the floor, and when he landed on the soft rug beneath it, all he heard was a cackle.