Chapter Text
then.
The best thing about summertime was convincing Hunter to be lazy with him.
It started with the convincing Hunter that they needed to make use of the Clarington’s lake house, a process which usually took longer than it should have, because Sebastian had literally the worst boyfriend ever. It usually involved pointing out that there was no doubt some sort of yard work or something similar that needed to be done, because apparently just having a lake house and being able to vacation there wasn’t reason enough to actually do so.
But eventually, they would end up out at the lake, and the first evening, Hunter would generally let himself relax without fighting it at all. The drive in generally got to him; he had never been a fan of driving long distances, but he also wasn’t the biggest fan of the way Sebastian liked to speed and tended to get a little bit distracted sometimes while he was driving, so while he let Sebastian drive sometimes, he preferred not to. It worked out for him, of course, because it meant that Hunter was tired and willing to just crash on the couch for the night.
The first full day there, though, Hunter would be out of bed before Sebastian woke up. And admittedly, that wasn’t that far out of the norm. It was pretty usual for him to get up and go take a shower, or go for a run, or, if he was in a particularly sweet mood, make breakfast then bring it to Sebastian in bed.
But of course, when Sebastian woke up, he could hear the faint hum of the weed whacker coming from outside. And so began the need to convince Hunter that he was on vacation.
He dragged himself out of the bed and grabbed their bags, needing something to busy himself with. He knew that he at least had to let Hunter get something done before he tried to interrupt him, or else it wouldn’t work and even if it did, Hunter would just be grumpy.
He grabbed Hunter’s things first, tucking them away in the closet for him to put on at his leisure. He frowned when something fell from the pocket of one of Hunter’s jackets and he bent down to investigate. It was a tiny velvet drawstring bag, and he furrowed his brow as he picked it up and pulled the strings open to peek inside.
… No way.
He looked down at the ring in the bag for a long moment, his mind quickly working to come up with any other reasonable explanation as to what he was looking at. It couldn’t really be an engagement ring, could it? Of course, his mind kept coming back to that, because, well, wasn’t the simplest explanation usually the one?
He snapped himself out of his surprise and pulled the strings tight again, put the bag back into the pocket it had fallen out of, and tried to push it out of his mind as he finished unpacking their clothes for their stay. He wasn’t supposed to have found it, and no good would come from overthinking it.
Once he’d finished up, he went to the kitchen, grateful that they had at least managed to go to the store to buy cereal and milk before coming in the night before. He poured himself a bowl of cereal and sat out on the patio, looking out and watching Hunter as he did yardwork.
And, admittedly, as much as he hated the fact that Hunter sometimes got so stuck in his head, in his need to constantly be getting something done, he didn’t quite hate this part. Hunter looked good in the morning sun, his sweat making his shirt stick to his skin until it annoyed him enough that he just took it off entirely and Sebastian was able to enjoy the way he looked like he was practically shimmering.
Eventually he got tired of just looking and not touching, so he put his bowl away in the kitchen and went out to the yard. “Babe, take a break,” he called out.
“I’m almost done.”
“Take a break,” he repeated as he walked up behind where Hunter was raking something, wrapping his arms around him and trying to nudge the rake out of his hands.
“Stop that, I’m sweaty, and busy,” Hunter protested, but he willingly let go of the rake and moved his hands to hold Sebastian’s arms in place around his waist.
Sebastian chuckled softly, leaning into his and pressing his lips to his neck. “No can do, Hunt, you know I love it when you’re sweaty.”
“You’re unsanitary,” he said.
“You like me anyways,” he said, giving Hunter’s neck a slow lick and chuckling softly as he felt a small shudder running through his boyfriend.
“Maybe,” he said, a laugh coloring his voice.
“God, you’re cute as hell,” Sebastian said with a soft laugh, pulling back from Hunter and taking his hands, pulling him over closer to the water, towards where there was a hammock set up.
“Bas, no, I really do have to get that done,” he said, shaking his head as he followed after him a bit reluctantly.
Sebastian turned around for a moment, pressing his hands to Hunter’s chest and leaning in to kiss him slowly. “C’mon, we’re going to be here all week, you’ve got plenty of time to deal with whatever bullshit chore list you’ve put together for yourself.”
“It’s not bullshit,” he mumbled as he kissed him again.
“Mhm, sure,” he said, kissing him again. “Listen, I promise I’ll help you out with whatever needs doing if you take a break right now.”
“Can I at least take a shower? I’m gross.”
“Later,” he said, shaking his head. “We can shower later.”
Hunter laughed and rolled his eyes at Sebastian softly. “Insatiable,” he mumbled, finally allowing Sebastian to finish dragging him over to the hammock where they carefully navigated settling in.
“You shouldn’t be surprised by that at this point,” Sebastian said with a soft laugh, curled up against Hunter and wrapping an arm around him, his hands moving over his side slowly.
“I guess you’re right. I’ve been putting up with you for so long, I should be used to it,” he said with a soft chuckle, running his fingers through Sebastian’s hair as he rested his head against Hunter’s shoulder.
“Yeah, you definitely should,” he mumbled, nuzzling his face against his skin. He closed his eyes and just laid there for a moment, a smile forming on his lips as Hunter wrapped his arms around him.
“You’re such a pain in the ass,” Hunter mumbled, his hand slipping up Sebastian’s back and rubbing over each notch of his spine. “I don’t know why I put up with you.”
“You know exactly why you out up with me. I’m the best and you love me,” he said with a grin.
“Yeah, I guess I do,” he said.
“Exactly. And in any case, right at this very moment I am improving your life. No one enjoys working. Especially not in the hot sun.”
Hunter shook his head slightly, chuckling. “I find some pleasure in it.”
“Oh, right, you’re dumb as hell, so of course you do.”
“If I didn’t love you, I’d hate you so much,” he said, kissing the top of his head.
“You’ve tried, and you’ve failed,” he said with a soft laugh.
“Damn you for being so charming.”
“Sorry,” he said with a grin, though it was obvious to both of them that he was approximately zero percent sorry.
They fell into a comfortable silence after that point, Sebastian closing his eyes as he nuzzled against his boyfriend. He took in a deep breath, appreciating the way his skin smelled after it had been kissed by the sun, the mingled smells of dirt and sweat clinging there as well. So yes, Sebastian hated Hunter’s sense of duty, but he couldn’t pretend that he didn’t like the after effects, the way Hunter was warm and cuddly and smelled so damn nice.
Part of Sebastian ached to say something about the ring, to tell him that he had found it and he was perfectly happy to put it on and let Hunter do the actual asking part at his leisure, but he held himself back. That would be better.
After a while the silence was broken by a soft snore coming from Hunter, and though Sebastian knew that he shouldn’t let him just fall asleep out here, he couldn’t help it. They were so comfortable, and he felt tired, too, and eventually he let himself relax as well, drifting off to sleep.
He woke up with a sunburn covering his back, aside from a white strip of skin where Hunter’s arm had been resting. And if there was any doubt that Sebastian wasn’t the only asshole in the relationship, Hunter spent a good five minutes just laughing about it and taking pictures, the smug bastard that he was, who didn’t burn but rather just tanned.
But Hunter took him inside and laid him down on the bed and straddled his hips as he rubbed aloe over his skin, so he couldn’t complain too much.
now.
Sebastian took risks these days. The passage of time was a terrifying thing and he was coming to realize that he wouldn’t always be young and void of real responsibilities and free to do whatever he wanted and, well, even be able to do those things when he wanted to. He wasn’t young enough anymore to be able to write off his behaviors as just being a stupid kid who didn’t know any better, whose brain hadn’t developed past dumb decisions, but that was alright, because frankly he didn’t need to explain himself to anyone. Some days he felt like he was falling apart, and if he just did this thing, it would be okay.
Sometimes it was bigger than others. Maybe he would get on a big stretch of open road and he would see just how fast he could make his car go; what good was it having a fancy sports car if you weren’t going to ever treat it like one, right?
(And it really wasn’t his fault that sometimes, like when he’d go back and visit Ohio and the roads were nothing but long flat stretches of corn fields upon corn fields as far as the eye could see, just begging for his foot to get heavy.)
Or maybe he would go into a store and grab something and walk off with it without paying, even though he knew it was such a punk ass kid thing to do. He limited himself to cheap things, like a bag of chips or something similar, and he told himself that it was practically a victimless crime.
Or maybe he would drink. Too many drinks too fast without enough food or water before or in between. Too many drinks with different liquors and mixers that always made him regret it later, but not enough to not do it again when the world got too heavy.
Sometimes when he got into one of those moods, he could hear Hunter’s voice in the back of his mind, warning him off of whatever he was doing. Hunter, telling him to turn down the radio or else he would damage his hearing. Hunter, wordlessly giving him bread before he went out and tagging along just to make sure he drank a glass of water once in a while and standing between him and the tequila until he got something else in his system because I am not dealing with your hungover ass, I’m just not.
But most of the time, he was able to just drown it out. He could turn the radio up just a little bit more and suddenly he couldn’t hear himself think, let alone allow the other man to climb into his brain, as well.
And some days, he needed a little bit more and he just needed to not think about it, at all.
He was watching the news and there was some piece warning people about the dangers of cliff jumping. If he was a more responsible person, he might have looked at it and thought “yeah, it does look fun, but maybe I shouldn’t.” But he wasn’t that person, and the clips they showed make it look like fun, and so instead what he did was grab his computer, look up the closest place he could go, send off a quick message (cliff diving, yes or yes?), and he drove.
It was a couple of hours away that he had to drive, because even though his life had led him out west, he had never been too much for anywhere that was too tropical, but eventually he ended up at a good spot. It wasn’t anything quite like the places in Hawaii that they had shown on the news, but it was better than nothing and there was a fairly good-sized crowd of people taking the jump. He hung around for a bit before he went ahead and did it, just watching some other people and chatting with whoever was around him. But eventually he got tired of waiting and he felt the itch and so he went for it.
At that point, things got blurred.
At first, everything was fine, everything was going well, until it wasn’t. He wasn’t sure what exactly it was that had hit his head, or rather what he hit with his head. Hell, he wasn’t even fully aware of it. Time had seemed to slow down in the seconds after he took the leap off of the cliff and when he anticipated he would be safely hitting the water, but when things did go sideways, he wasn’t sure how or when or where it happened. He was faintly aware of the moment he went below the surface of the water, the sounds of rushing water and loud voices from above him saying something he couldn’t quite make out, hands reaching out and grabbing him, blackness.
The next thing he was aware of was a room that was way too bright. He tried to roll over, or at least bring his arm up to cover his face, but he felt weighed down in an almost surreal way. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes, slowly processing his surroundings. There were white walls, a green curtain, an empty chair beside him, monitors around him, hooked up to him. Flowers. He was in a hospital.
“What in the fuck.”