SEBASTIAN
SEBASTIAN
Craig had nothing to say on the slow ride back to the stables. I gave him his silence, trying hard to respect his need for space. We took our time seeing to the horses, barely exchanging a word, and he refused to meet my eye. Brianna offered to finish up for us in the end, not unkindly. Even then, he made no comment.
It's not until I’ve parked my truck on the farmhouse's driveway that his muted agitation finally escapes him. "I'm thinking about your bourbon."
"My bourbon?"
"Drinking it." He still doesn’t look at me; his face turned to the passenger window. He also isn't making any move to climb out. "And I'm thinking I might just go."
"Go where?"
"Any place that isn't here."
"By yourself?"
"That'd probably be best."
"It’s late," I shrug as though entirely unconcerned. "You should be thinking about sleep."
Reaching for the handle, I swing my door wide and jump from the truck. There isn’t a sense of any genuine intent to his words. But his anger is still thick in the air, and in truth, my nerves are feeling pretty damn wracked by him, just imagining how crushed he must be. A sheer force of will keeps my eyes fixed forward, steadying my pace as I start toward the house.
I hear the obnoxious creak and slam of his door a moment later, and I determinedly don't glance back. "Thanks for talking me out of it, Bas," he calls after me.
"As always, you're welcome."
"Am I, though?"
"Very."
A jolt of relief sparks through my chest at the sound of his footsteps closing in behind. And when Dobby greets us at the front door, zipping around and between our legs, the appreciative crook of his lips incites a rogue uptick to my own.
"Hey, Mutt," he says, permitted the rare honour of a head ruffle. "Now, that's a proper welcome."
"Oh, sure, Craig, because you've always responded so well to the caring-sharing bullshit?"
"Yeah, whatever." His tone is flippant.
But he knows I'm right. If I'd reacted the way I immediately wanted to when his dad threw him out, he wouldn’t be here with me now.
I bring up the rear as we trail Dobby's lead through the burrow, his wound healed and his limp slight, no less impatient than he's ever been. We pull up at the staircase, and the conspicuous hush of the hallway suggests my other two housemates may have already retired for the night.
The jut of my chin and a sweep of my arm motion Craig onward. "You know the way," I belatedly think to lower my voice.
Craig has stayed over often enough these past few weeks that my aunt fixed up the spare back room for him. He no longer objects when Ashleigh refers to it as his; he now even keeps some clothes in the drawers. There's an extra toothbrush in the bathroom, a fourth setting at the table almost every meal, and the days that he hasn't been around never seem to pass quite as swiftly as the rest.
Yet, still, it's like he's stubbornly hesitant to fully accept that he belongs.
When he doesn't start the climb, swerving around me instead to continue along the hall, I'm thrown for only the second it takes my dog to disappear after him. Then I'm following the both of them into the snug.
"Are you okay?" I ask, stopping just inside the door; a stupid question.
"Not really."
"Are you ready to talk about it?"
"Not yet."
The room is dark except for the warm flicker of a low fire in the hearth. Craig's standing by the cabinet, his back to me. But the little unit isn't what he's focused on, and I'm familiar enough by now with the draw he feels to my uncle's painting that I'm not instantly on edge. It holds his gaze even as I approach, stepping in beside him, while Dobby curls up on the sofa.
Our arms graze as I turn to him, but he doesn’t seem aware. "So, what, then? We could make some cocoa and play some cards? Or maybe watch a film?"
"So, nothing." His head softly shakes. "You don't need to stay up with me, Bas."
"Yeah, well." Crouching to open the glass door between us, I reach inside the cabinet. Two tumblers are retrieved first, placed on top, and then I straighten with the bottle in my hand. Short work is made of unsealing it and pouring a measure each. “How often have I told you to piss off, and you didn’t?”
Still, I’m spared no bite. Nudging one drink against his elbow until he caves, he likely doesn’t even register what it is that I hand him. Tones of oak, maple, and nutmeg, with a subtle toffee finish; I’ve read from the label too many times, and yet, the whiff caught by my nostrils only burns as I claim the other drink for myself.
The disquieting hush isn’t given much opportunity to stretch far, though, before Craig next blindsides me with another candid insight to his head space. “I would make a terrible lawyer.”
“You’re a terrible liar, sure,” my instinct is to agree.
“That was always the plan, you know?” He continues without reaction. “Study law at college. Study law at uni. Then practice law at the family firm for the rest of my life. I dreaded it.”
“Guess you’ve dodged a bullet, then, huh?”
“Cars are what I’ve always loved. Tinkering with them, figuring their workings, and fixing them up. And I think that’s what I want to do now; train to be a mechanic or something. Maybe an engineer, although I don’t know how I’d pay for school. Alex has been helping me look into it.”
“Wow, okay. That’s amazing, Craig.”
“But my parents wouldn’t ever acknowledge any such course as worthy. I could reshape the future of automobile design, and it wouldn’t matter. Because it isn’t what they wanted for me.”
Whatever response I might give to that gets clamped behind gritted teeth. It’s painful to fully register the shit Craig is going through, just how much of himself he believes to be shameful. For all the time we’ve spent together in the shed, playing around with scrapyard finds, his keen enthusiasm and easy smiles have far too readily fooled me. My brain battles against the urge to envelop him.
And after a whole evening of dodged glances, the exacting stare he at last hooks on me jackknifes deep, snagging like a caught thread inside my chest. Shadows dance across his sharp features, his expression raw in a way that’s almost too much to hold. But I refuse to look away as the clink of his glass on mine jars the moment.
There’s no pause to second guess myself before I toss back my shot, wincing, while he watches with an intensity that tingles my every nerve.
“To the bastards who’ve screwed us,” he says, taking only a sip. His brittle smirk falls apart before it even begins; barely a twitch at the corner of his mouth. In the next instant, he’s put three strides of space between us, and the flames hiss and flare as a sharp flick of his wrist sends the remaining liquor from his tumbler into the grate. “May they someday royally screw themselves.”
I haven’t thought to make any slight move when another three steps return him to my side. Then, boundaries be damned, I take the last small step closer still.
My lips touch his, a featherlight press. His breath catches, and I break off.
"Bas."
I'm already bearing in again, the rasp of my name skimming a wild thrill over my jaw.
"Don't."
The pulse at his throat racing beneath my fingertips, his palm flat against my chest, I’m snapped short.
"Don't," he repeats. "Don't you dare. Not again. Not now."
Except, for all that I should withdraw, I fail to transfer the thought into action as he fists my shirt, pinning me. My ache for him tugs inexorably, every point of contact feeling impossible to sever and too precarious to endure.
His glint is sapphire-sharp, that errant flicker of challenge I'm eternally unprepared for. "You don’t want this, remember?"
"I was wrong."
And it becomes abruptly apparent that whatever I thought I'd felt of his anger before, a whole other beast of fury has been itching to get free. The suddenness with which it blazes is staggering; the impact of his mouth on mine slams my heart clear of my ribcage. He shoves me away from him, and I stumble back into the cabinet with enough force to rattle its fragile contents. A swoop of dizzying panic almost fells me.
"You were wrong?! " Craig doesn't so much as blink when my loyal guard bolts from the sofa, hackles raised. "You told me you were safe, Bas, and then you took me to your bed!”
“Please—”
“You told your goddamn ex you regretted it, said I'm not worth your pride. Then you hugged me as if I meant something, only to pretend like it never happened. And now?" He makes no effort to help as I struggle to right myself. "You heard my dad, right? When I'm feeling further away from my baby brother than I ever have, Bas, and I’m just about managing to keep my shit together; now is so not the time for your fucking games!"
“I didn’t plan for any of this,” words erupt from my mouth with an urgency I fail to temper. “Us. It’s nothing I ever saw coming, and yeah, I’ve messed up.” There’s an entirely unfamiliar pitch to my voice. “I freaked out because—”
“Freaked out,” he echoes over me with a snarl of derision. “Because you’re too dumb to learn, huh?”
“—I couldn’t stand the thought of being used as your newest escape, Craig.”
“Sure.”
“Except, becoming yet one more thing you needed to escape from felt so much worse.”
His retreat takes no further prompting, another vicious shove to my chest thwarting the grab I aim for his arm. “You don’t have a single actual clue, do you?”
It’s not as though he can go very far; not quickly, anyway. He doesn’t have Roxy. But, still, ignoring Dobby’s warning growl, he’s already halfway across the room. "It's gone midnight, Craig. If you want to be alone, that’s fine. Just—"
The door almost slams in my face, its handle caught by my finger a split second ahead of its thunderous bang. And fuck it, nope, by no means is any part of that even remotely fine.
I should have admitted my feelings the instant I stopped denying them. Hell, I could have kissed him this afternoon before our day turned to shit. Or any of the plentiful days in between, for that matter.
But it’s scary, this all-consuming influence he has over me. Ever the moron, one reckless slip to my caution is threatening everything we might be to each other afresh, and I’m legitimately terrified of letting him disappear on me again.
I’m also no better braced to catch up to him, tripping over and into him mid-chase along the dark hall. His foot ambushes mine, perhaps without intention, and for the second time in as many minutes, I nearly buckle to the floor. Not until my blind reach catches the wall for balance do I realise that he’s sunk down to his butt against it.
“I really don’t want to be alone,” Craig’s voice cuts through the gloom. Elbows propped on his knees and head cradled in his balled hands, he sounds as strangled as my gut feels. “But we’re a mistake I can’t keep making, Bas. Because I can’t risk losing you.”
He doesn’t react when I drop down beside him, not even to stifle the telltale tremors of a sob. And when I reach out, he doesn’t flinch away from my touch either. Slowly taking hold of his fist, I begin to pry it open one finger at a time, squirrelling my way inside until I can press our palms flush together, half of his face uncovered. The soft impact of a stray tear on the inside of my wrist crushes me far worse than his anger could.
“If you truly believe we’re a mistake,” I venture, utterly failing to hide the cracks, “then so be it. But you won’t lose me, okay?"
This is not the intimate moment I’d hoped for, watching teeth bite down hard against the quiver of his lip. It sure as shit won’t take us back to where we were. Yet, still, “I don’t regret us fooling around.” My grip on him tightens. “I don’t regret that morning we met or any single other thing we’ve been through together since, rough though it’s been.” There can be nothing left unsaid. “I lie in bed at night wishing you were beside me, and I fall asleep knowing it’s my fault you’re not.”
Another of his shaky exhales huffs over our joined hands, a reminder to draw air into my own tight lungs. “More than that, Craig. You’ve become the best friend I ever had, and no matter how else you may feel about me, truthfully, I will never feel sorry for that either.”
For a devastating beat, neither of us moves. I’ve irrevocably laid myself bare, and whether or not he’s heard what he needed to, my every nerve is on high alert. Pulse thunderous in his silence, I try hard to suppress the fierce torture of it.
Then, Craig withdraws from me. The sharp absence of him stuns like an ice-blast as he pushes up off the wall to his feet without a single word of notice. One determined backward step and shadow hides his expression. However, too little time is spared for that blow to land before the world is thrown off kilter once again.
My wrist seized in a bruising cuff, his vehement tug wrestling the very last shred of my control; I’m yanked up and into him. “You seriously are a bull-headed dolt, Bas,” he says. Just that, and I can’t blame the shot of liquor for flipping my stomach inside out. No sooner do our bodies collide than he wheels around. He doesn’t let me go, though, his clasp remaining rigid on my arm. I think my legs will give with every stumbling step as I’m led back along the hall behind him.
Watching from the snug’s dimly lit doorway, head cocked and ears pricked, Dobby only gives a swift wag of his tail as we pass. It would seem that he, at least, considers the situation to now be sufficiently defused.
We aren’t followed to the stairs, and Craig gives me no pause before starting the climb. Every step creaks under his tread, and although breaking free of him wouldn’t be too difficult, I continue to make no such attempt. Not so much as a glance is flicked my way when he hauls me upward behind him.
Until, that is, “Thatchu, Bas?” Ashleigh’s groggy call carries from her room the instant we reach the landing. “Craig, timesit?”
At the slightest shake of his head, a pointed look steals the wind from my lungs. But I’m not sure I could speak regardless, even if I had something more to say.
It's been a month of wasted opportunities; a whole month since he made his first and only steep hike into my space, becoming the first and only person I've ever taken to my bed. I almost don’t dare to hope, for all that his gaze slams into me again at the foot of the second staircase. There’s only one possible destination from this point, and still, my doltish brain wars savagely with my heart.
What happens in the next minute passes in a wholly confounding blur. I remember nothing of the trek to my room or stepping inside. Then, suddenly, his hands hit the door either side of my head, slamming it shut, and his breath is a flame’s lick on my skin.
“You have to be sure, Sebastian,” he plays my own words against me.
The moon casts a soft silver glow through the skylight, enough to illuminate a smirk curving his mouth. It’s a small thing, but it transforms his entire face. Heat sparks low in my belly as the cage of his body presses closer still, and damn, I want more from him. I crave him so violently that I ache.
I’ve genuinely never felt so unanchored before in my life. “Don’t stop.”
He’s in full control. I’m at his mercy. And when our lips meet, a catastrophe of stars explodes in my chest as his tongue claims mine, the kiss no less fierce for being more certain. Arms dropping from my shoulders, he secures my waist; I arch greedily into him, needing his hold to keep me grounded. But, too soon, with the same intensity that we’ve crashed together, a wrenching groan breaks us apart.
It takes a precious moment to realise the noise escaped from some uncharted part of my gut, carnal and desperate, and I couldn’t have checked myself if I’d even known to try. Craig draws back only the barest sliver, his fingers raking a shiver down my spine as his mouth dips to the reactive pulse at my throat. “You’re not my escape,” he says, searing a brand core-deep, “and you’re more than my best friend. You’re my home.”
For the longest time, my every careful choice has been made to shield me from dangers such as this; refusing my emotions the free rein to get me lost. Now, though, I’m already entirely too far gone for rescue, not a governing thought in my mind beyond the warm body I fall beneath on my bed and the intoxicating rush of anticipation.