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It's a bit awkward, having someone's fingers interlaced in his so intimately. It's even more awkward, given that he's been in far more intimate and downright scandalous positions with others, and yet he feels an almost heady rush in his face and chest as Nat sets down into the soft grass, offering a soft, encouraging smile and tugging him next to them.
It's from here he tries to take in the evening sunlight bouncing off of the swaying grass and turning the white flowers golden, but he's focused on his host's eyes instead; the striking emerald green that is so stark against the muted, natural hues of the trees, grass, stems of the flowers. This is a green so potent that he is sometimes convinced that those irises were in fact carved from the gem itself, cliche as it sounds.
"Beautiful," he breathes. And he realizes that his musings have just been vocalized — not to fear, because Nat smiles and nods.
"Right? I'm here with Cove every day, any time, but it never gets old. Maybe it's the familiarity of it all that makes it all the more comforting."
Saved by the bell. Though, there is the miffed annoyance at the mention of the tall boy. Ah, yes. The paramour. Baxter had declined Nat's offer to visit the hilltop at first, not wanting to intrude on such a space so personal, but the latter insisted, and how could he say no to such a sincere offer? So there he is now, a growing pang in his chest that overrides his admiration for the scene around him.
"Yes...it's quite a view. Very soft. By no means dazzling, but soft." Nat furrows their brows.
"And what do you mean by that?" Baxter shakes his head and chuckles. So fiery, so confrontational. There is an explosiveness in them that he's never seen in anyone, that makes him all the more enthralled, for it drives the sparkle in their eyes and drive in their voice.
"Ah, I apologize. I did not mean any offense by that. What I meant was, the view here is not flashy, or spectacular...not grandiose, I mean. It's warm. Covert. Cozy, in fact. A novel sort of cozy, nothing like the enveloping, enclosed warmth of the forest of my home, or the vast, sweeping Virginia mountainscape. No," he says, turning to face Nat, noticing how captivating they are against the oceanic, hilly backdrop. "It is homely. This space from the hilltop to the rolling waves below is a finite space of your own, but the ocean beyond is infinite, and reminds you of the unending stretch of everything around you. That what you can do, and can be, is infinite. Here and now, forever and the future, so close, and yet so impossibly out of reach...that is the scene that lays out in front of me. It is warm." He says the last word with a breathy emphasis, longing laced in his voice.
Nat's breath hitches, and they blink, startled. Baxter feels reproach growing in his chest, but the former smiles instead.
'Oh, wow...that's...really profound. I've been here all my life and I haven't even thought of it that way. Then you show up and go full Shakespeare," they joke, elbowing Baxter snidely. He laughs and gives Nat's shoulder a squeeze.
"Well, maybe as a transient visitor, the fleeting, one-time nature of this makes me need to cherish it more, indulge in it more, before it slips away from my fingers forever."
"See, what'd I say? And for the record, you bet neo-Shakespeare's coming back here again for more soliloquies." Baxter rolls his eyes but laughs nonetheless alongside them, basking in the fading sunlight and watching the waves lull, all while a dull ache pulses in his soul.
He was not talking about the view.