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“It was real between us, wasn’t it?”
Sebastian blinked up in surprise but Hunter didn’t look away, his grey eyes were as grave and focused as he remembered. “We were only stupid kids, but we really did love one another.”
It was Sebastian who downed his eyes, green settling on the hands that curled on the clasps of his briefcase, now. “It was for me.”
His tone was soft, so unlike himself, a vibration to his words that they hadn’t had in years. So many years.
Hunter’s sound was gruff, and Sebastian glanced up only to see him looking out the window, as he nodded quietly in response or acknowledgement, he wasn’t sure. The line of his jaw was still as daunting and enticing as he remembered too.
“I’m sorry about this. I had no idea they would assign my case to you.”
Sebastian shrugged at that. “Clare’s testing me, they all want to see what I do with cases out of my area, before caving in and finally giving me the senior partner spot I deserve.”
Hunter chuckled to himself before he turned his eyes back to the boy - the man sitting on the couch right next to him. He couldn’t help the lift to the corners of his mouth, not much more than he could help the slight glint of fondness to his eyes. “Then you better make sure I get everything so I’ll think about leaving you a good review.”
Sebastian snorted. “Should’ve thought of that before you agreed to wave the pre-nup, stud.”
Hunter smiled and looked out the window again, but this time it made Sebastian wish he’d kept his words to himself. The smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“We do a lot of stupid things when we think we’re gonna spend the rest of our lives with someone.”
He had his hands in his pants’s pockets, bunching up his suit, and Sebastian felt the ridiculous urge to take them out and hold them. A flash of years past, a dorm bed where they had lied together on Sunday mornings, and Sebastian would study those hands and fingers lazily, in the post-haze of their morning fuck, crossed his mind. He looked back down at his open brief and kept checking the documents inside, going over the plan in his mind, the plan to get his high school boyfriend divorced.
“I don’t care about the money.” Hunter said suddenly, as Sebastian had finally closed the briefcase, satisfied with his preparation and got up to get himself some water. He sipped the glass as he studied Hunter over it, waiting for the rest. Hunter turned around towards him when he got no reply and shrugged, himself.
“The things I really want can’t be taken back now.” He raised his eyes to Sebastian as he finished his sentence and the latter felt a shiver run down his body at it.
It was too late. Hunter thought. It was too late to go back and make different choices. To re-choose what he thought was steady life-long loyalty over the uncertainty of being madly in love with someone as unpredictable as Sebastian had been then. It was too late to trade a failed marriage and a bitter degree, for being brave enough to apply to anything else, somewhere close to Harvard, and never break up with Sebastian, never say those words in their shared dorm, a week before the end of school.
It was probably even too late to want to feel that alive again.
Sebastian sighed, and Hunter chuckled, uncomfortable at the awkwardness of his own creation, and he pinched his nose, a habit he had picked up from Sebastian himself, years back, and had never really dropped.
“It would appear divorce makes me ramble. I apologize, Bast, I am aware that you’ve got nothing to do with this.” The nickname slipped off his tongue, before he could stop it, and then he couldn’t take it back. He cleared his throat, but when he rose his head, Sebastian was right there, standing in front of him, and cutting his next words short with a determined look in him.
“We’re not teen fucks anymore, Hunter. I’m not gonna spread gossip about it on lunch time if you want to mourn your marriage. You’re allowed to. Even for a bullshit one.”
Hunter expected him to shrug it off, but he didn’t, keeping his eyes on him as he said it, to the end, and it made his throat feel dry. He had spent the last ten years trying to forget this boy who had made him think there could be a brilliant plan in coming out to his family and turning Princeton down. Half an hour with him in a room, waiting for his almost ex-wife, and Hunter couldn’t possibly conceive how he had ever walked away from this.
He wasn’t sure when he moved. But Sebastian’s two forefingers were suddenly flat against his lips, holding him back, as he blinked in surprise, finding himself mid-through leaning in to kiss him. He felt a hand slipping into his pants but to his disappointment all it did was slip out with his phone. Sebastian pulled back and quickly looked down as he typed like lightning. He slipped Hunter’s phone into his suit’s front pocket, then, and quirked an eyebrow.
“There. You can have my personal number. And after this shitshow is over and you pay me handsomely for my services, then, you may give me a call. A month later, or once you figure out how you’re going to make up for the fact I’ve been forced to have mediocre sex partners for the past decade. Whichever comes first.” He paused, but Hunter was so stunned he had nothing to respond to that and Sebastian didn’t look entirely displeased by it.
He pulled Hunter closer by the tie as he adjusted it, looking down at it as he went on. “For now, wipe that look off your face, according to Jude, our helpful bribed doorman, your wife is on her way, and divorce negotiations tend do a lot better with the hurt gentleman from ye time look you had before.” He looked back up. “Doesn’t generally help if you look like you’d rather be fucking me against those windows.”
The elevator ringed and Sebastian smirked, winking, before he walked past him to greet Hunter’s wife and her lawyer. Hunter had to take three deep breaths, before he could pull off the state of mind Sebastian wanted him to, and turn around to do the same.
As he signed the papers, hours and hours later, he didn’t feel as defeated as he imagined he would. He felt relief.
He could call Sebastian on his personal phone in 29 days. Until then... He was sure he would have legal doubts in need of clearing up through his professional contact.